Customer intelligence equips us to utilize customer related information for developing deeper customer relationships, which can be leveraged to improve profitability. It acts as the basis for targeting potential customers of various attributes, identified from existing profitable customers.

Due to the commoditization of services, products, there is an increased focus on service and customer interaction as a differentiator – customer experience, proactive service etc. help in positively influencing customer loyalty. These aspects, when combined with the enterprise analytics at a strategic level, lead to the Customer Intelligence. Through Customer Intelligence, a company can understand customer requirements, habits and is better equipped to handle customer issues so as to improve the overall customer experience.

Dimensions of Operationalizing Customer Intelligence

Customer Intelligence is multi- dimensional and primarily encompasses three different aspects:

• Customer Information Integration: It is essential that the data garnered is clean and as per the guidelines given by the data users. The data compiled should be able to provide a 360⁰ view of the customer.
• Customer Insights: This helps in the segmentation strategies and modeling. It is important to know the specific customer preferences, requirements and the customer value. The insight should be in depth and help in identifying the various potential activities of specific customers, such as customer moving to another brand, buying or responding to a particular event, campaign etc.
• Customer insight Operationalization: The analytic customer insights need to be integrated to the front office applications so that individual customers can be addressed through customized treatments. Marketing and sales decisions can then be taken accordingly.

According to a study by McKinsey, it was found that extensive and best practice users of customer analytics outperform their competitors. For such companies, their business strategies aligned as per CI proves to be the competitive differentiator.

Types of companies on the basis of their CI dimension

Usually, companies fall into either one of the four categories on their drive for these three customer intelligence dimensions.

• Basic Level – In this case, the company does not have a 360⁰ view of the customer. It is primarily dependent on manual analysis of customer data. This may be due to a lack of knowledge or infrastructure required for analytics.
• Foundational Level – Here, the company has the basic necessary parameters in place such as unique customer ID and customer segmentation.
• Advanced Level – The company has a complete 360⁰ view of the customer and the customer campaigns and interactions are customized on the basis of the value segments.
• Distinctive Level – Along with the 360⁰ view of the customer, the products and services are differentiated on the basis of the different segments and all customer interactions are insight driven.

Where does your company stand?

The goal of any company should be to reach advanced or distinctive level in order to leverage maximum benefits of CI. To do that, several important measures need to be adopted-

• Integrated deployment of IT infrastructure, optimal analytics skills (in-house expertise), and smart execution/organization.
• Top management incorporating analytics insights in key decision-making.
• Developing a culture that appreciates and acts on customer analytics.
• Putting new processes in place that managers and executives can readily understand and take actions on accordingly.
• Engage and act to monetize social media insight with highly personalized offers and promotions.

Customer Intelligence dimensions and company categories combined are useful in creating a highly useful diagnostic matrix for the manager to find out the current level, intensity, and depth they would like to achieve in the future for developing strong customer relationships, niche offers and other proactive services.

A truly integrative approach to analytics is the gateway for extracting maximum value from customer intelligence. As a company progresses upward through its CI dimensions, its overall performance and efficiency in customer experience also gradually enhances.

Leading customer intelligence companies, such as VOZIQ, provide services and solutions that can be leveraged by enterprises across diverse verticals to move on to an advanced or distinctive level in Customer Intelligence.