In a climate where “the customer is always right”, businesses are always striving to find new ways of getting to get inside of the heads of its buyers to better satisfy their needs and increase their sales and profits. By getting in inside of a customer’s head, a business will want to learn about what makes a particular buyer tick, their triggers, and how they think. Through the utilization of tools in the digital landscape, businesses can gage the thought patterns of their buyers in a more thorough way.
What is Customer Intelligence?
By collecting and interpreting information about your buyers and finding out the who, what, how, where, and why of your customer base, you are building a customer intelligence profile. Having customer intelligence about buyers allows for businesses to create strategies and campaigns that better engage customers via digital channels like social media, emails, etc.
Why Customer Intelligence is Important
The more a business knows its buyers, the better a business can cater to them. A business must be able to empathize and relate to their customers in order to serve their needs in an efficient way. An organization that can see themselves through the “buyer’s eye” will be able to catch any obstacles in the lead-to-customer experience. The more you know, the more your grow.
5 reasons to Start Using Customer Intelligence
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Encourage unwavering support between buyers and your company
As mentioned earlier, digital channels can be utilized to conduct customer intelligence on buyers. Understanding the who, what, where, etc. can be seen and studied quickly due to social media profiles and email lists having information on the needs a business’ buyer base, thus encouraging long-term support.
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Manage industry shifts in real time
Digital channels provide a business customer intelligence intel in real time. By observing customer interactions with a product or service online, businesses can see what encourages engagement and what turns people off. It also can foresee trends in the industry by studying the behaviors of customers through various platforms.
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Enhance sales tactics
Ensure buyer retention in your customer engagement strategies by using customer intelligence to oversee their behaviors in the buying journey. Does a business’ landing page on its website attract enough visitors? If not, then a business can find out what is not working by looking at their customer intelligence report to see how their website can better appeal to customers’ needs.
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Customer Intelligence increases the efficiency of a business’ tactics
By pinpointing the who, what, why, and how of a customer intelligence report, a business can come up with distinct techniques that can specifically target your buyer base without wasting time, money, and resources.
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Customer Intelligence assists business’ in being more connected to their buyer base
Doing a customer intelligence report helps a business see its service through the buyer’s eyes to see what works and what does not. Knowing the likes and dislikes of your buyer base is an essential part of growing your target audience.
(Also Read: 12 Ways to Grow Your Business with Customer Intelligence)
Advantages of Customer Intelligence
- Gaining intimate knowledge about your buyer base allows for a business to construct strategies and campaigns that are more…intimate.
- This kind of intimacy can create a “one-of-a-kind” atmosphere around the brand of your business. If customers think that only you can provide this type of service, then they will choose your business over the competition every time.
- Overseeing the behaviors of buyers online can give a business clear insight about the success of their engagement strategies and what they can improve on.
Customer Intelligence Examples
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Personalized first-time buyer journeys
Appeal to first-time buyers using customer intelligence apparatuses according to what they purchased, how many was purchased, how much income went into the purchase of those products, etc.
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Demographic-based buyer correspondence
Tailor your communication style to your buyers based on age, sex, needs, etc. to speak to specific segments of your customer base.
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Behavior-based product suggestions
Buyer behaviors can be what they look up on a search engine or what they click on your website. Monitor these behaviors to push the kind of content that buyers will most likely be captivated by.
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Background location selecting
A thorough customer intelligence report lets a business know where its buyers live. If an important event is happening in a particular part of the country, a business can market a sale based on the theme of the event to those that live nearby.
Customer Intelligence Platform/Tools
- Signal Customer Intelligence Platform- gathers, put together, and generates buyer information into insider knowledge in how a customer base thinks and converts that into sales
- QuestionPro Communities- encourages buyers to interact with your content, gathers their opinions about the content as it is happening, enhances the buyer experience with polls and questionnaires, and gives prizes to buyers for participating in the process
- Competitive Analytics- provides quantitative and qualitative knowledge of a business’ buyer base through focus groups, interactions, and analyzing data
- Optimove- where customer intelligence digital tools come together with mechanized marketing platforms to create effective campaigns targeting buyers
- CMNTY- collaborates with research firms like Blauw and Ipsos Belgium to create digital spaces so that could monitor the behaviors and interactions of buyers for their clients
What is the future of Customer Intelligence?
According to Signal, “91% of consumers state that they are more likely to do business with brands that offer personalized deals and suggestions.” It is obvious that for a modern business to succeed that they must put their time and resources into information collecting techniques of their buyer base. But businesses must also have tools that can tell the difference between useful and bad information.
That is where artificial intelligence comes to play. AI can mechanize, break down, and decipher large amounts of information in a small amount of time. This helps businesses save time, money, and resources to focus on creating an effecting buyer experience.
Final Thoughts
Customer Intelligence is just another term for businesses to make sure that they get to know their buyers and how to best serve their needs. No longer is it enough a business to just sell a product and send their customers a “have a nice day” receipt after a purchase. A buyer must feel that the business that they are deciding to purchase from cares about the needs and can reach out to them in a relatable way.
You ever accidentally find a business on a digital platform and the more you got to know about it, the more you wanted them to succeed? You might want that business to succeed because you not only are intrigued by their products, but you are also drawn in by their backstory or you support their message on a moral level. That is what customer intelligence is all about. That business most likely lured you in by using the techniques mentioned in the article to attract both first-time and recurring customers.
