The field of customer insight is rapidly evolving, as the demand from businesses to gain a deeper understanding of their customers has become increasingly critical to commercial success. The methods, tools and technologies used to capture and analyse customer data have exploded in recent years, enabling businesses to not only gather insights but to predict and anticipate future behaviour.
From surveys to signals
The traditional methods for gathering customer data through surveys and questionnaires, continue to add value in allowing businesses to understand demographics, preferences, and satisfaction levels. Tools like customer relationship management (CRM) systems, social media and geo data signals when integrated with primary research provide businesses with the opportunity to build customer knowledge forensically and holistically.
This makes it possible to connect customer sentiment with behaviour, track customer interactions across the end-to-end journey and personalise marketing efforts to individual customers. Furthermore, advancements in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have increased the accuracy and efficiency of customer insights, enabling businesses to not only measure but also predict customer behaviour, unlocking future growth opportunities.
The resulting changes in business capabilities
As the tools and technologies have developed though, many businesses find themselves overwhelmed by the volume of customer data available and struggle to derive value from multiple and disconnected data signals. The challenge is for businesses to ensure they have the right capability processes in place to derive tangible customer outcomes from this increased customer knowledge. With the growth of e-commerce and digital platforms, the ability to integrate customer insights across multiple channels has become increasingly important to gain a complete understanding of customers. This omnichannel integration coupled with increasing cross-functional collaboration within businesses ensures that customer insights inform decision-making throughout the company.
Building the capabilities to enable the business to make quick agile decisions based on the insights and act on them rather than waiting for long analysis is becoming crucial for an organisation to keep up with the fast-paced environment we operate in.
To learn more about how KPMG can help you connect and frame the wealth of customer data available to help you make better customer-centric decisions within your business continue reading on this article.
