Customer Intelligence: The game changer - Part 2

In my last post I defined what customer intelligence is, its purpose & benefits. This post is about how to develop customer intelligence for the organisation. 

Customer intelligence! How do we do it?

Developing good customer intelligence takes time, money and effort, but in exchange the sizeable benefits for organisations include better streamlining of services, better allocation of resources, more tailored products and improved customer satisfaction levels. But how do we develop this intelligence?

Data can be developed intelligence across four stages. I've illustrated the journey in the following model:

Each stage presents a number of questions and actions that an organisation has to answer and to do respectively to develop its knowledge.

Stage 1: Set out your customer intelligence objectives

This stage involves establishing why you are developing customer intelligence. As I’ve mentioned before, developing customer intelligence can be a costly, resource heavy and usually an extremely lengthy exercise. This stage involves developing a business case for this work, to justify its need for the organisation. This is the also the stage where the buy-in is sought from the various stakeholders, including the organisation as a whole especially the top tier, the users and suppliers. Ensure that you are clear as an organisation about why you are developing customer intelligence. I've jotted down a few questions that you may want to ask at this stage:

• Have you got a new product that you want to launch?
• Are you trying to improve an existing service?
• Are you trying to improve your market share?
• Is there a legislative/regulatory requirement?

Stage 2: Identify the data needed to create information

Sometimes organisations can spend so much time and energy on setting out its objectives and resourcing customer intelligence projects, that the most obvious needs of the organisations can be overlooked. Often the right data isn't collected, whether that’s missing out vital data or asking non relevant questions.

• Be clear about data you need to develop your customer intelligence. 
• Consult with the different departments in your organisation about what their customer intelligence needs are and what data do they need to develop it.
• Have somebody senior within the organisation who can approve (and veto) what data is collected. It’s not always possible to collect everything that everyone needs; otherwise the data collation exercise would become unmanageable.
• Remember the data will need to be processed into a structured form to convert it into information to meet your objectives.  Establish how you are going to do this, who will collect the data, who will convert it into information, what systems will you use.

Stage 3: Evaluate the information to develop knowledge

Evaluate the information to develop the customer intelligence. Use it to reflect on what you have learnt:

• What is it telling you about your customers? 
• What actions do you need to undertake based on the information to move closer to meeting your objectives?

Stage 4: Act on the customer Intelligence and evaluate the subsequent results

Take action based on your customer intelligence and evaluate the results

• What were the outcomes of your actions?
• Did they help you meet your objectives?
• Did the customer intelligence and subsequent actions yield the results that you expected?
• Did it reveal a need for developing new objectives or re-evaluating existing ones?

Customer intelligence costs organisation's time, money and effort to develop, so it’s important to maximise its success and justify its existence.Ok well that’s it for today..... 

References

GRIMES, N., 2009. The nine steps to best practice customer insight, My Customer.Com. [online] Available at: <http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/customer-intelligence/best-practice-insight-what-essential-invisible-eye> [cited 30 October 2011].