2015 Trends - Consumer Analytics 2.0

One of the best ways to bring the perspective of the customer to business decisions is by using data analysis and CRM analytics to find correlations, isolate patterns and track trends to serve up the type of information to allow a company to tailor the customer experience for improved engagement and better profits, according to Marianne Cotter, CRMSearch.com

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Consumer insights need to be data mined and correlated with the right mix of CRM and BI (Business Intelligence) solutions that can seamlessly integrate. This is a challenge for many corporations that are becoming customer centered at every angle of their operations and that want to tailor their products and solution offerings to match up to individual customers needs.

Forrester research points out in a recent study that companies have to become customer obsessed by turning big data into insights, embracing the mobile mind-shift, transform the customer experience and accelerate your digital business strategy.

In this day and age there are many data sources and insights to be uncovered to truly understand our customers deliver tailored 1:1 messaging and to gather input for improving existing and designing new products and services.

Source: Forrester 2014 Global Priorities and Journey Survey

Here are 4 key data sources that will help to connect the bread crumb trail of consumer interactions and need to be part of your consumer analytics strategy to truly understand your customers needs and behavioral patterns to enable a better customer experience with your products and services:

1. Social CRM Analytics

In the sales, marketing and customer service departments, marketing is being forced to monitor, communicate and engage in social commerce business with several hundred public social networks.

Customer service has to respond to tweets and Facebook and LinkedIn discussions, as new service channels and sales are now using social media as a source of new leads and intelligence on prospects.

Major CRM vendors are responding by integrating with social media platform and partnering up with social listening and monitoring vendors like radian6, netbase and others

2. Mobile CRM Analytics

Contextual marketing is big and it is more and more important to deliver the right messages and offers at the right time.

Typical information to be integrated with are geospatial information, internal and external data sources, bluetooth beacon data, loyalty reward solutions and mobile payment services.

All of this is evolving at a very fast pace which posts a challenge to traditionally set up company infrastructure and applications that are not designed for real-time mobile shopper insights and monitoring.

2. Big Data CRM Analytics

The marketing department has been most impacted by the explosion in customer information available to businesses during the past five years.

Predictive analytic models for churn analysis, product and service recommendations direct to the customer, and/or sales prompts for salespeople are all becoming more sophisticated.

Thus, the data is available and the tools are emerging, but the problem is the lack of skills and resources to use the tools.

Vendors like SAP, Birst, Qlikview among others are addressing this by providing BI self-service tools that enable non-IT users to find their own data insights by providing intuitive user interfaces and functionality that enables collaboration.

Of course the underlying architecture and data cleanliness is still required especially when the insights are operationalized into corporate dashboards, reports and consumer visualizations.

4. Internet of Things CRM Analytics

As cars, buildings, bodies, household machines and wearables are connected to the Internet and as the price of sensors and communications drops down toward $1, the automotive, consumer, healthcare and hospitality industries, among many others, will be transformed connecting the different data points for consumers and providing leading edge functionality and value through data insights.

Cisco Systems issued a report that claimed 8.7 billion devices were connected to the internet in 2012 — and the networking equipment manufacturer predicted the number would explode to 50 billion by 2020.

The McKinsey Global Institute lists the IoT as a "disruptive technology" with a worldwide "economic impact" that could reach $6.2 trillion by 2025.

That is a lot of data and that comes with opportunities to deliver customer and consumer applications that add great value by connecting these devices and their data, ultimately delivering the gold nuggets of consumer oriented real-time data insights.

Soon wearable tech that measures your vitals will connect to your coffee machine, thermostat, fridge and lighting system to make sure you get the right amount of caffeine, cool air and lighting and automatically re-order caffein supplies to keep you awake early in the afternoon after you had the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving Day that is threatening to make you fall asleep.

In Summary

At the forefront of analyzing consumer behavioral patterns and customer profiling will be sales, marketing and customer service departments enabled by BI insights and CRM IT architecture effectively promoting, selling and supporting these new services and data insights to the consumer of the future.

Below is a list of my previous posts you might be interested in:

• APIs - The New Currency of Agility
• How to Achieve Business Technology Convergence
• Is Beacon Technology Ready for Prime Time?
• 4 Critical Steps for Digital Success