4 Strategies for Gathering Intelligent Customer Insights

There are three main reasons to gather customer insights: to increase customer satisfaction, move customers through your sales funnels, and improve your marketing efforts. Although you can try to improve brand loyalty without information, you won’t get far without having a decent amount of information about your customers. Here’s how to get that information:

1. Take advantage of AI-powered insights

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can help you learn plenty about your customers. AI-powered software can even help you crunch manually-generated data in new ways to offer fresh insight you couldn’t get before.

In an article examining how AI-powered consumer insights affect ecommerce, DZone discusses Microsoft’s prediction that 90% of customer interactions will soon be done through channels that use artificial intelligence. This includes gathering insights directly from customers and analyzing web tracking data.

AI-powered insights can use location data differently

It’s all about changing the way you leverage the data already available. For instance, instead of just looking at IP addresses, use location data to understand how your customers move in the world. AI will help you use location data to deliver more targeted marketing messages to your customers based on how they use your services.

AI-powered social listening provides an advantage

Social listening will tell you what your customers are saying about you so you can intervene and fix any problems. AI-powered social listening gives you access to instant alerts and can compare you to your competition so you can see where else you can improve.

2. Get first-hand feedback from your customers

Traditional customer surveys won’t give you the powerful insight needed to make impactful changes to your business. Surveys with predefined answers don’t allow customers to share specific feedback. You need specific feedback if you want to improve your business.

The best way to know what your customers think, feel, and want is to ask them directly. Using the Delighted platform makes this process easy. If your organization has a mobile app, you can use Delighted to deliver customer surveys right inside your application. Your customers can respond within the app for a seamless experience.

Are your customers promoters or detractors?

Promoters are people most likely to actively promote your brand, even if it means risking their reputation. Detractors are people most likely to actively dissuade people from buying from your brand and are usually more outspoken than promoters. You want more promoters than detractors, but you’ll never know how many you have by handing out traditional surveys.

However, you can quickly and easily find out where you stand by using the Delighted app to calculate your Net Promoter Score (NPS). Scores range from -100 to 100 and are calculated by subtracting your percentage of detractors from your percentage of promoters. The information used to calculate your score is obtained directly from customer input regarding how likely they would be to recommend you to friends and family.

Remember, customers will consider your survey part of their overall experience with your brand. Whether you use an app or hand-deliver your surveys, make the process smooth to support a positive brand experience.

3. Hire an expert data analyst

You probably don’t have time to crunch and analyze your own numbers. At least, not to the extent required to extract meaningful insights. The truth is, unless you’re focused on data with all of your energy, you’re going to miss important insights.

Analyzing data is a full-time job. It’s not something you can hire out to a random contractor, and it’s not a project you can offload to a staff member who needs to keep busy. Data analysis is a professional field, and if you want your data to be analyzed properly, you need an expert.

An expert data analyst will be able to use AI-powered tools to extract and analyze meaningful data you never thought possible. Since data drives corporate decisions, it’s critical to ensure your data is accurate, complete, and seen in the right context.

4. Supplement with external data pools

One of the best tricks in the book is to supplement your data with external data pools. Using your own data, you sometimes get a fragmented view of your customers. AI-powered predictive models need internal and external data to create comprehensive insights and answers.

Supplemental data can include data from sales, marketing, and service departments, but can also include insights gathered by survey companies like Nielsen.

Accurate customer insights drive better business decisions

When decisions are based on data, accuracy matters. No matter how you source your insights, focus on accuracy for the best possible results.