The power (and problem) of consumer intelligence

Consumer intelligence isn’t something new. The time of making brand decisions based on intuition, and gut feeling, have gone. Now, we have insights instead of instinct - data gathered about customers and consumers that can be used to predict future buying behavior.

This has a wide range of benefits that brands can use to boost profits:

• Product development. Create products that meet the changing needs of customers.
• Personalization. 36% of shoppers say retailers need to offer more personalized experiences. Consumer intelligence provides the information needed to power that.
• Campaign targeting. Talk to your customers in their language, and solve the problems they’re discussing.

The list goes on. Brands are aware of consumer intelligence, and fully understand the benefits.

The problem is, how do they get it?

The enterprise battles against data silos, digitalization, and mastering that ‘single source of truth’ has left many unsure how to find the insights they critically need.

In Accenture’s Business Futures: Signals of Change report, only 31% of those surveyed said they are completely confident in their ability to foresee, and respond to, consumer behavioral changes. Leaving 69% with a problem. And it’s easy to understand why.

Brands are left behind in the accelerated age of the consumer

Forrester Research says we’re in the age of the consumer. Thomas Friedman says we’re in the age of acceleration. And they’re both right.

The growth of digitalization has enabled the empowerment of consumers. At first, you would think the growth of social media and the internet would play into the hands of businesses - allowing brands to target consumers on a global scale.

But, this just created more competition. Giving consumers significantly more options. If you make one mistake, there’s 20 competitors lined up to take your place.

Consumers were in control. And as Friedman discussed in his book, Thank you for being late, these sorts of changes were already being accelerated, driven by exponential growth.

Then, there was the pandemic. A catalyst that redefined how consumers thought, acted, and lived. Expectations that were already expanding before, are now higher. Fickleness is rife. Personal beliefs are more critical. Consumers are questioning every aspect of how a brand touches their lives.

Consumers are in front, and accelerating away. Brands, and their traditional consumer intelligence, can’t keep up.

“It’s not enough to just keep up with your customers — you must get out ahead of them. And if you weren’t already focused on that before COVID-19, the requirement for speed and agility is now a given.”

Cinny Little, Principal Analyst, Forrester blog, Why You Need Consumer Intelligence Solutions Now, June 18, 2020

Brands can’t tame the flow of living consumer data

The other issue is data. The good news is we have a lot of it. The bad news is that we have a lot of it. Over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created worldwide every day. And for brands, this leads to data chaos.

The problem is, there are more potential data sources than ever before - social listening, chat logs, reviews, SEO, CRM, loyalty programs, etc., etc. - and with it comes FOMO - “If we don’t monitor X-data, we could miss out on valuable insights, so lets monitor everything.”

This is escalated, as departments often can’t agree what data is relevant on a company scale. Marketing may see one source as critical, while sales doesn’t, while product development may not even be aware that that source exists. A single source of truth is an impossible to find unicorn.

So brands data hoard. They pull as much data as they can from all channels, and end up with a chaotic mass of information that is impossible to interpret.

Think of data as water. A little bit is key to survival. Too much, and you’ll drown. Data hoarding will only lead to severe data quality issues.

Source: netimperative

The other issue with consumer data is that it’s constantly changing. Those accelerating consumers I mentioned above are evolving every day. You can’t base insights on data from last year, or even last week. They will already be outdated.

Let's continue that water analogy. Water needs to flow. If you collect it without a constant stream refreshing it, it will stagnate fast.

So brands have a herculean task. Turning impossibly large amounts of evolving and ‘living’ data from multiple departments, into accessible insights they can use. In a way that is both scalable and fast.

"55% of business leaders say they lack trust in their data assets, hurting their ability to be fully data driven."

Experian 2021 Global data management research

The history of consumer intelligence

To solve the issue, brands need a solution that...

• Integrates phenomenal amounts of data from a multitude of sources
• Quickly turns it into insights they can action, before their audience has the opportunity to change again

Put simply, they needed a platform built for scale, speed, and simplicity.

Old school consumer analytics weren’t the answer. Based on pre-digital ideas, they were too slow and inaccurate for a low latency, continuous, unconnected consumer data world where consumer choices, preferences, and desires change at the drop of a hat.

This was shown in the Capgemini report Consumer Insights: Finding and Guarding the Treasure Trove. For slow-starter brands (those struggling to keep up with their competition), 45% of those surveyed said they had a lack of integration across data sources. 25% of front-runners had the same issue.

There wasn’t anything on the market that could provide the data integration on scale brands desperately needed, that was also fast enough to stay ahead in the age of acceleration.

Until now…

The future... consumer intelligence acceleration

Consumer intelligence acceleration is the solution. Designed to overcome the hurdles hampering the growing demands for consumer insights.

Enabling brands to tame the flow of living data, into a continuous stream of insights. Helping you foresee, and respond to, consumer behavioral changes as they happen. Here’s how it works:

1. Create a single customer view

Consumer intelligence acceleration allows you to create a single source of truth for your enterprise. Allowing you to connect all the sources that matter to you.

The solution also won’t allow your data to stagnate, supplying constant flows of current data into your data lake, to enable you to make decisions based on the most current information you have available.

Now you can stop drowning in data, instead, taming all the living data around you into something your brand can use.

2. Completely understand your brand

Big data comprehension needs a big solution. Artificial intelligence helps segment and comprehend all of this data, translating it into easy to understand visualizations and insights. And that doesn’t just mean textual data. You can include video, audio and visual data, for that complete understanding.

Complete that consumer 360-degree view, and know your consumer issues, needs, sentiment, usage in real time. Helping you outrace the age of accelerations. If your consumer mindset changes, you’ll know, often before they realize it themselves.

3. Accelerate your brand actions to profit

This isn’t just about consumer intelligence. That isn’t fast enough. Consumer intelligence acceleration is about staying ahead of your consumers. Ahead of the market. Ahead of the competition.

It provides you with insights that you can action immediately, helping you adapt your campaigns, products, and services in real time. Forget waiting weeks, or even days to see how a product launch went. You can see exactly how your consumers respond as it happens.

Brands with superior customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lag behind. Consumer intelligence acceleration enables your brand to be ultimately customer-centric, for better, faster, more profitable results, every single time.

Conclusion

The accelerated age of the consumer is here. For those that keep ahead, there’s new potential, new growth, new markets, and more money to be made.

But that’s only for the innovators. The brands that face the new challenges head on, and are willing to prize the power out of the hands of consumers. The brands that make the most of consumer intelligence acceleration.

To see how you can be part of the consumer intelligence future, request your free demo below.