Customer insights are truths one can discover about customers by observing how they behave, analysing data, and listening to what they say. Businesses can use these customer insights to guide their strategies, including new product development, marketing approaches, and to identify ways to enhance the customer experience.
Simply put, customer insights help us to get to know our customers better. They help us to understand customer needs, why and what they buy, and what they prefer when interacting with our businesses.
How the Methods We Use to Gain Customer Insights Have Evolved
Although the term may be relatively new, entrepreneurs have always worked to understand what customers want. Whether they were selling or bartering, people always understood the value of knowing their customers. For centuries, this was done in person. Tradespeople offered goods or services and soon found out why people supported them through simple word of mouth and observed behaviour.
As commerce developed, decision-makers became less likely to have direct contact with customers and had to rely on figures and those who dealt with customers for information. As communication tools improved and it became possible to canvass opinions from large samples of potential customers, market research emerged as the next big thing.
Nowadays, we have analytics, big data, and even AI to help us uncover important information about our customers. However, among all these tech tools, human interaction remains as important as it ever has been. In fact, it’s where we will gain many of our most significant insights.
Customer Experience Insights
There are multiple sources we can turn to for customer experience insights, and each of them is important. Simply knowing there is demand for a product or service isn’t enough. If we do not offer our customers positive experiences, they will look for alternatives. In a competitive world, it is very likely they will find other options.
Search for customer experience insights in:
- Website and app analytics
- Customer reviews
- Customer service and support records
- Customer surveys
- Social media posts and mentions
- Communities and forums
- Market research results
You need not exercise your imagination to find ways to enhance the customer experience. Your customers will give you the answers themselves, either through what they say or what they do. If you haven’t considered customer insight analysis before, you are very likely to have the data already. It’s just a matter of putting it to work for you.
Customer Data Insights
If you’re hoping to gain insights about your customers, what they think of your business and its products, and how you can better serve them, it’s time to dive into the data. Apart from looking at how they interact with your website or app, you can find information like:
- Demographics: Find out what type of people support your business and where they are from. You may think you know, but you might find some surprises.
- Purchasing patterns: Analyse what people buy, when they make a purchase, and determine whether they return to buy again.
- Customer lifetime value: Your business wins customers, but customer lifetime value indicates what each win is likely to be worth and gives you a benchmark for improvement.
- Channel preferences: Discover how and where customers like to get in touch. Though it is comparatively simple to please them all with omnichannel service, this information can help you to set priorities.
- Sentiment analysis: How customers feel is just as important as what they do. Find out what earns you accolades and where there may be room for improvement.
- Usage data: If you’re selling an online service, you can get customer insights by finding out how often they use it and which features they prefer. A customer success initiative may help boost their satisfaction.
Apart from helping you boost customer satisfaction and, in turn, customer retention, you may also gain valuable customer segmentation insights. This helps you to target your marketing spend where it will be most fruitful.
Other Types of Customer Insight Analysis
There are numerous things you should know about your customers and should track through customer insight analysis. To demonstrate just how helpful this might be, consider the following examples:
- Uncover customer needs and pain points
- Investigate buying behaviour
- Gain insights into customer journeys
- Measure customer satisfaction
- Get feedback about your products and services
- Determine what engages customers
- Investigate customer expectations and preferences
- Determine the signs of potential churn
- Find out how customers perceive your brand
As noted, much of the information you need to gain these insights is already available. Making sense of it is no longer a costly or time-consuming process. You may need a few digital tools and a little help, but it will be worth the investment.
Provided you are ready to act on customer insights, the road to business growth will become clear. Ready to try something new? Test it out and use customer insights to determine whether you have accurately identified customer preferences.
Need Customer Insights? Your Customer Service and Support Agents Are Uncovering a Goldmine
You can infer a lot from data-based customer insights, but the best information you can get comes from customers who are ready to talk. For example, you might send out a customer satisfaction survey and get responses. However, you won’t always know why customers rate you in a certain way. They may even be a trifle dishonest, magnifying minor problems or providing “polite” answers.
A customer who is on the line, talking to your agents, will tell you so much more. Specifically, customers are likely calling because of an obstacle to satisfaction. Perhaps they don’t know how to navigate your website, choose the right product for their needs, or use it once they have it. For each person who calls, there are likely hundreds of others who simply give up, walk away, and never come back.
The message? Every interaction with a customer who is ready and willing to share their experiences is a goldmine of information. Your representatives are listening, and they should be equipped with software that helps them record the types of interactions they handle and their outcomes.
Get Human Empathy and Intuition On The Line With RSVP
Now that we have stated a strong case for humans listening to humans as the best source of customer insights out there, you may be wondering if there’s a scalable way to implement the round-the-clock, in-person customer service your customers want.
There is. Choose RSVP’s London-based team for outsourced customer service that also serves you. We have the advanced software that lets you gain customer insights at a glance, and the people who will treat your customers as well, or better, than you could treat them yourself.
Customer satisfaction matters, and there are limits to what AI can achieve in this area. It still takes people to truly understand people, and our team is there for you. As the World Economic Forum says, “Human capital is your new competitive edge in the gen AI era.” You have the products; we have the people. Contact us today and let’s work together to get deep customer insights that will help shape your business.