As customers ourselves, we ‘enjoy’ elements of personalisation in the services that we receive, whether that’s through Tesco’s club card scheme, personalised recommendations based on previous purchases from Amazon or being able to like companies on Facebook which push news to us in our activity streams. We are getting used to this type of service and the core enabler behind this is customer intelligence. It’s also known as customer insight and customer knowledge.
We are living in the Information Age according to the academics. We've gotten data rich because of the web, we even contribute to it by generating content even to the point that we have to mine our data to make sense of it (a future post). We now have the tools to learn more about our customers but so do our peers or competitors. If we fail to understand to what our customers need or want, they will go to somebody that does. (check out my post on how all of us are making the web better)
This applies to the social housing sector as well. On the face of it, demand for social housing exceeds supply, which limits customer choice but tenants aren't the only customers. Stakeholders like the Homes and Communities Agency and the Banks are also our customers, we need to demonstrate that we are delivering good tailored services to our tenants to engage these stakeholders trust and confidence. What’s at stake? Well a simplistic answer is organisational growth. Reduced backing from these bodies would result in insufficient resources for developments and stock transfers. (Check out my posts on what social housing is and a brief history of social housing to find out more about the sector).
What is customer intelligence?
Customer intelligence is the process of using relevant information to develop a better understanding of customer preferences, beliefs and aspirations to enable the design and delivery of better and more personalised products and services.
Customer intelligence can help organisations to:
- Streamline its processes for delivering their products and services based on a better understanding of customer beliefs and expectations.
- Identify their priorities to enable the easier allocation of resources
- Develop better tailored products and services based on the customers requirements.
- Improve customer service levels and increase satisfaction rates
Above all else customer intelligence should be used by organisations to inform their strategic planning and should be used as tool in the decision making process.
Two pitfalls lot of organisations fall into, include treating the customer intelligence process as just data collation exercise, forgetting that data needs to be developed into useable knowledge for the organisation. Customer intelligence isn’t about collecting data, it’s about what you intend to do with it. The other thing organisations need to watch out for is treating the customer intelligence as a one off process; it’s a continuous activity which helps organisations to grow its knowledge of its customers. Remember, customer needs and preferences change, customers change for that matter (IDEA, 2009).
Creating Intelligence
The process of developing customer intelligence, in my opinion is linked to knowledge development within organisations. Customer intelligence begins life as unstructured raw data gathered through consultations, surveys and a variety of other methods. The data is contextualised and organised in relation to the organisations targets or key performance indicators to organise it into facts and figures to convert it make it useable information. Knowledge is created when the information and is considered & analysed in relation to the organisations ethos and goals. Previous experiences are applied to the information by the organisation to reflect and improve itself and this is the stage where simple information becomes organisational knowledge.
The following diagram outlines this process:
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The process of converting data into information and transforming information into organisational knowledge |
This is the end of part 1, in the next instalment, I will propose a few questions that organisations should ask themselves when they are developing their customer intelligence. I will also outline the key elements to consider when developing customer intelligence. See you next time!
References
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