Every business person knows the customer is always right. But the customer is also mysterious and figuring out what they really want, and need has been one of the most persistent business riddles of all time. In the past, companies would infer and predict, but with spotty rates of success. Now, however, companies can truly understand their customers and adjust their products or service by leveraging objective, data-driven insights.

Business intelligence (BI) technologies incorporate many different next-gen capabilities including advanced analytics architecture, relational search engines, data connectors, APIs and others. In all cases, however, these BI technologies are engineered to make collecting, storing, and analyzing data easier. Data can be leveraged in a number of different ways, but one of the most universally applicable is to unlock customer insights.

It is hard to overstate how much of an asset it is when companies understand their customers in depth. Here are just a few examples of how companies turn customers insights directly into revenue and profit:

Improve the Online Experience:

BI tools reveal when and why users abandon an online shopping cart or leave a website. Companies can then resolve these points of friction to create a seamless online experience and avoid lost conversions.

Perfect Marketing Messages:

Whether or not a marketing message is effective depends largely on the copy. Business intelligence empowers companies to write targeted copy that resonates with readers and motivates them to take action.

Upgrade the In-Store Experience:

Data can be gleaned from the way customers move around a store and interact with the products and staff. BI technologies then turn this data into insights about how the store could more convenient or appealing to drive more sales.

Create a Customized Experience:

It’s possible to collect data on all customers, some customers, or just one customer. Instead of appealing to customers in mass, companies can reach out to very specific and granulated customer segments with special offers or product promotions.

 Focus Acquisition Budgets:

Keeping customer acquisition costs in check is a notoriously unruly problem. Customer data reveals what acquisition streams are most profitable, empowering companies to reduce wasted resources while acquiring more customers.

 Reduce Customer Churn:

Data analysis also reveals what factors lead to customer churn, along with which customers are more profitable. Companies are then able to reduce the churn rate while actively trying to retain the most valuable customers.

 Innovate Offerings:

BI tools and technologies go beyond sales figures to reveal what customer really like and loathe about a company’s existing products and services. Once armed with those insights, companies can be improving their offerings in empirical and actionable ways.

 Identify Your Evangelists:

The best customers aren’t necessarily the ones who buy the most. They could also be the ones who leave the best reviews and mention a brand the most on social media. Taking a deeper look at data reveals who the most valuable and important customers really are.

Customer insights are obviously an asset. The question is whether the return outweighs the investment in BI technologies, which depends entirely on what technologies are chosen. Cost is an important consideration, but accessibility is ultimately more important. The easier it is for companies to utilize BI tools and data, the sooner they can deliver an optimal customer experience.

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