In my previous blog in the Customer Analytics series, I reviewed the list of the most popular data sources that organizations are purchasing or creating about their customers. Clearly, having all this data is better than not having it at all, but itβs only worthwhile if you can actually apply it in a meaningful way to impact your business.
Itβs encouraging to see that 82% of the survey respondents reported that their company is attempting to perform some level of analytics on their customer data. They understand that customers can say a lot through their data, and if theyβre like most I talk with, view customer analytics as a business necessity rather than a convenient commodity. I suspect this number is going to grow higher as Big Data becomes even more prevalent and accessible.
Of those companies currently doing customer analytics, we asked the logical follow-up question about where they apply the insight they get from customer analytics. As expected, most of the insight is used for core sales and marketing activities related to the overall lifecycle of the customer β from when a prospect first becomes aware of your product or service, through the research and the buying phase, and ultimately toward creating loyalty and advocacy. For example, if you run a services-based company and analytics identifies individual customers who are at risk to churn, sales and marketing personnel can put together retention campaigns in an effort to keep that person from discontinuing service.
We also found that a lot of this customer insight was being used to make changes to a product or service, perhaps to prioritize what might be included in the next release of software, or improve the design of a product so itβs more user friendly. And we also saw a lot of people report that they use analytics to determine the optimal distribution channels, and maximize their effectiveness.
But as I mentioned in the Introduction, many organizations also reported some significant obstacles that are impeding their ability to use their data to get the clear view of their customers they require. In my next blog post Iβll outline the first of three major challenges that became clear from our research.
Customer Analytics Blog Series: Perspectives from Industry Leaders
| Part 1 β Customer Analytics Blog Series: Introduction |
| Part 2 β Customer Data and Insight Can Take Many Forms |
| Part 3 β Analytics Provides Input to Strategic Operations |
| Part 4 β Getting and Working with Data is a Problem for Many |
| Part 5 β Line-of-Business Users Want Access to Easier Tools |
| Part 6 β Big Data Should Make ROI Easier to Measure |
| Part 7 β Where are Companies Investing in Analytics? |
| Part 8 β Conclusion and Recommendations |
Bob Laurent
Director of Industry Marketing
