I’m excited to announce that our new research on how firms use customer analytics was just published today.  The new research reveals some interesting findings:

  • Customer analytics serves the customer lifecycle , but measurement is restricted to marketing activities. While customer analytics continues to drive acquisition and retention goals, firms continue to measure success of customer analytics using easy-to-track marketing metrics as opposed to deeper profitability or engagement measures.
  • Finding the right analytics talent remains challenging . It’s not the just the data. It’s not the just technology that hinders analytics success.  It’s the analytical skills required to use the data in creative ways, ask the right questions of the data, and use technology as a key enabler to advance sophistication in analytics.  We’ve talked about how customer intelligence (CI) professionals need a new breed of marketing scientist to elevate the consumption of customer analytics.
  • CI professionals are keen to use predictive analytics in customer-focused applications,  Forty percent of respondents to our Global Customer Analytics Adoption Survey  tell us that they have been using predictive analytics for less than three years, while more than 70% of respondents have been using descriptive analytics and BI-type reporting for more than 10 years. CI professionals have not yet fully leveraged the strengths of predictive analytics customer applications.
  • Firms want to experiment with next-best action analytics, social analytics : While segmentation and targeting models have been established customer analytics techniques for a long time, given the variety of customer interaction data available now, firms want to experiment with next-best action analytics and social analytics. Read more about how to derive value from social data in our social intelligence playbook curated by my colleague Zach Hofer-Shall.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our Global Customer Analytics Adoption Survey earlier this year, the results of which are published in this new report.  We will send you a copy of the research shortly.

So what else in the works for customer analytics research this year?

  • The Customer Analytics Landscape: This research report will help customer intelligence professionals navigate the complex customer analytics landscape and highlight various tools, technologies and services that customer intelligence professionals must consider to build their customer analytics capabilities.
  • The Forrester Wave™: Customer Analytics Solutions: Last month, we kicked off our first Forrester Wave™ evaluation of leading customer analytics technology and software providers.  We will evaluate these technologies based on how the customer analytics solution helps clients in key areas of analytics production, analytics consumption, and analytics activation.

If you want to hear more about my upcoming research or participate in this research, feel free to reach out through our inquiry process or ping me directly @Srividya. Look forward to continuing the conversation around customer analytics!