Today’s successful companies aren’t built on only the best services, products, and web presence. Rather, much of their success lies in knowing exactly what their customers want, need, and expect — all of which are revealed by customer intelligence analytics.
Understanding the modern customer requires a data-driven approach. Customer data enables companies to make informed decisions that have a high chance of achieving the desired outcomes. Once you have the data that can reveal your next best actions, you need to analyze it and understand the story it’s telling you.
In case you missed it, we recently dished on the purpose of customer intelligence and the best customer intelligence platforms to fuel your consumer insights. Now, let’s take it to the next level and focus on how customer intelligence analytics plays into a well-rounded intelligence strategy.
Contents
What Is Customer Intelligence Analytics?
Why Does Customer Intelligence Analytics Matter?
How to Get Customer Intelligence Analytics
Customer Intelligence Analytics Use Cases
Benefits of Customer Intelligence Analytics
How Meltwater Intersects Customer Intelligence and Analytics
What Is Customer Intelligence Analytics?
Customer intelligence analytics meaning: The process of transforming raw customer data into insights and uncovering what the data says.
Customer intelligence analytics refers to the analysis of customer-related data and turning information into insights. This data comes from various sources, including:
- Feedback surveys
- Social media
- Customer service interactions
- Purchases and transactions
- CRM
- Website behaviors
Customer intelligence analytics reviews this data to find patterns and trends that may indicate future behaviors. In doing so, companies can better anticipate customers’ needs, personalize their experiences, boost loyalty, and ultimately become more competitive.
Why Does Customer Intelligence Analytics Matter?
You already have massive amounts of customer data at your disposal. Customer intelligence analytics helps you make sense of it all in a low-lift, scalable manner.
Customer intelligence analytics is the backbone of business growth. It allows companies to understand their customers on a deeper level by gaining insights into their preferences and needs. Using analytics, companies can detect trends and patterns that show them where to focus their efforts and budgets.
Without data analytics, companies take the “pasta approach” to customer satisfaction: They throw their ideas on a wall to see what sticks.
Using analytics is like following a recipe for success. Much like reading cooking directions and timing the pasta to know when it’s done, you can get customer insights without having to do much testing and guesswork.
Tip: Learn more about best practices for customer data management.
How to Get Customer Intelligence Analytics
Getting customer intelligence analytics requires a combination of tools, technologies, people, and processes, along with a dose of strategic thinking.
Here’s how you can build a customer intelligence analytics business strategy:
Step 1: Set up your data collection streams
Data is the foundation of customer intelligence analytics. You need to collect data from every channel your customers use to get a full picture of their experiences.
Social Listening and Sentiment Analysis
One opportunity is to leverage social media monitoring and sentiment analysis tools like the Meltwater Consumer Intelligence Suite. By tracking mentions of your brand, products, or industry on social channels, you can gain a deeper understanding of customer opinions, preferences, and trends. You’ll also know how customers feel about your brand and gain more context into what they’re saying.
Tip: Learn more about brand tracking, brand monitoring, and brand tracking software.
Customer Feedback
Customer feedback offers a treasure trove of valuable information for businesses. Companies gain clear insights into their customers' preferences, pain points, and expectations.
Direct and indirect feedback should be part of your analytics process.
Potential sources include:
- Surveys
- Questionnaires
- Formal complaints
- Online reviews
- Social media conversations
- Customer service emails
- CRM notes from phone conversations
Customer feedback serves as a reality check for companies. It offers unfiltered opinions about the brand's reputation and performance in the market. Honest reviews from customers highlight areas where you may be falling short or excelling compared to competitors.
Inferred Feedback
Other data sources, such as website analytics, allow you to infer aspects of the customer experience. For example, you might review on-page time, number of sessions, or bounce rate to learn more about customers’ online experiences.
Step 2: Invest in analytics tools
Analytics tools collect and transform your data sources into usable insights. Your data team might build an analytics system from scratch or tap into ready-made platforms like Meltwater. These systems should transform raw data into science-based insights.
One area of opportunity here is advanced analytics techniques, such as predictive modeling and machine learning algorithms. These technologies analyze historical customer data to identify patterns and anticipate future behaviors accurately.
With these findings, businesses can proactively personalize their marketing campaigns and deliver timely offers that align with customers' interests and desires. Ultimately, these tactics foster stronger connections with customers by showing them their preferences matter.
These are the tools you should take a look at: Social media analytics tools, customer data platforms, customer intelligence platforms, consumer insights tools, audience segmentation tools, and customer experience management software
Step 3: Assign teams to analyze and review findings
Data and insights without oversight and action are as ineffective as a lack of data. To make the most of your customer intelligence analytics, you’ll need to assign analysts and decision-makers to review the findings and decide the next best steps.
Use the insight you extract as a guide for your business growth strategy. Compile them into stakeholder-specific reports with the information they need to make sound decisions. Include charts, customer journey maps, or other visuals to help put the data into context for them.
Most importantly, make this step part of your regular cadence. You will always have access to the latest customer intelligence and ensure your strategy aligns with their needs, wants, and preferences.
Customer Intelligence Analytics Use Cases
Customer intelligence analytics applies to multiple use cases, including:
Customer journey mapping
Customer intelligence analytics reviews various data points throughout the customer journey, such as browsing behavior, purchase history, and even social media activity.
Businesses can gain a deeper understanding of what drives customers’ purchasing decisions. From there, you can use that intel to create more personalized and targeted marketing campaigns, resulting in higher conversion rates and satisfied customers.
Behavioral segmentation
Customer data gives you a glimpse into past purchases, browsing habits, and social media interactions. Businesses can gain a deeper understanding of what drives their customers' decisions.
This information allows companies to tailor their marketing strategies, product offerings, and customer service to better meet their audience’s needs and expectations.
Read more on marketing segments vs marketing personas
Personalized marketing
Segmentation is the key to personalized marketing. And no, we’re not talking about segmentation based on age, gender, or other surface-level factors.
Though those things are important, you’ll need to dive deeper and gain visibility into behavior patterns, preferences, and purchasing history. Reveal the unique characteristics and needs of each segment so you can tailor marketing strategies and offerings accordingly.
Tip: Learn how to make your audience segmentation truly personal and read more about customer segmentation and customer segmentation software.
Attrition detection
Customers often show signs they’re unhappy or might switch to a competitor well before they actually do so. By monitoring customer interactions and tracking engagement levels, businesses can identify customers who are at risk of leaving and take proactive measures to retain them.
For example, by identifying patterns in purchasing behavior associated with churn, such as declining frequency or average order value, businesses can create targeted retention campaigns or offer personalized incentives to encourage customer loyalty.
Benefits of Customer Intelligence Analytics
Customer intelligence analytics helps to complete your sales and marketing strategy. With more organizations relying on data-driven strategies, you need ways to make sense of your data to know how to proceed.
Doing so invites a range of benefits, including:
- Identifying upselling and cross-selling opportunities
- Making your content and messaging more relatable
- Introducing products and services your customers actually want
- Stronger customer relationships through personalized communications
- Increasing customer loyalty by solving their pain points
- Gaining an edge over competitors who aren’t using customer intelligence analytics
- Reducing marketing spend by knowing where to allocate time and resources
Ultimately, better marketing decisions drive better outcomes. The more you know about what your customers need, what they’re thinking, and how they’re feeling, the more you can position your brand to cross their path at timely moments and meet their needs like no other business can.
How Meltwater Intersects Customer Intelligence and Analytics
The Meltwater suite brings customer intelligence and analytics into the modern age, giving businesses the data they need and the insights they need next. Our platform offers comprehensive market research data from global sources, filters out the noise, and delivers neat and tidy results you can trust.
Key highlights of Meltwater for customer intelligence analytics include:
- Real-time insights into customer behaviors
- Smart audience segmentation
- Shareable intelligence to keep your team in the loop
- Proactive data analysis to ask and answer new questions
We rely on traditional market research techniques combined with the power of AI. Our platform answers questions about your customers, including who they are, what they want, and how you can help. You don’t need to know what you’re looking for — we’ll detect trends and patterns on your behalf and open doors to new insights.
Come see how Meltwater takes customer intelligence analytics to new heights when you fill out the form below:
