INTRODUCTION OF CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE Customer intelligence (CI) is information derived from customer data that an organization collects from

both internal and external sources. The purpose of CI is to understand customer motivations better in order to drive future growth. The application of business analytics to customer data is sometimes called customer data mining. Internal customer data can be generated by any customer interaction and is typically stored in corporate databases in management systems, call center systems and sales systems. Data external to the organization can be gathered from many different sources. External data typically falls into one of three categories:

Personal demographics, which include data such as age, income level, debt level, educational profile and marital status. Such data might be analyzed to explore buying patterns of people in specific income brackets,

Changes in sales as people age, or sales comparisons of homeowners and renters. Geographic demographics, which include data aggregated from specific locations. Such data might be analyzed to explore buying patterns in rural areas, for example, or Areas where most residents are young professionals.

Attitudinal data, which includes any information about how a customer -- or potential customer -- perceives a company. Such data might be gathered from surveys, contact centers or even comments about a product or service

MEANING OF CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE Customer intelligence is a term used to describe the process of collecting data about one's customers and applying the information gained to a business plan. Knowing one's customers is a very important part of conducting business; if one's business offers products and services that people are not interested in, the business will usually fail. Customer intelligence analysis can be as simple as determining the general demographics of a given area or as complex as analyzing phone and e-mail interactions for key words and phrases that reveal some information about what customers want. A company can use the information to specifically cater its business plan to the desires of the people to whom it is trying to market its goods and services. Customer relationship management is a broad category used in business that describes a company's attempts to attract new customers and to please existing

customers. Customer intelligence is one important aspect of customer relationship management. Without knowledge of one's customers, one cannot effectively adjust one's business plan to better serve those customers. Customer intelligence is also related to strategic decision making, another important business concept. Strategic decision making involves gathering as much information as possible about one's customer base and about one's resources in order to make more effective decisions that will better please the customer. Businesses use many methods to gather customer intelligence. Initially, it is typically important to gather basic information about one's customers, such as geographical information, age, and gender. This information is then supplemented with data about the transactions that various groups make with the company; in this way, products and services can be directed to those who want them the most. Surveys or mystery shopping can also be used to gather more information about customers and about public opinion concerning a company or product. Companies also try to gather information about the customers of their competitors so they can try to figure out how to get their competitors' customers to buy from their company.

A great deal of customer intelligence gathering is conducted on the Internet. Companies closely monitor their websites to see what customers are interested in and what they never use. Businesses sometimes use email surveys as well, which give customers the chance to directly tell them what they want from the company. Sometimes, companies even use complex programs that analyze key words and phrases used in exchanges with customers; these key words and phrases may be used to gauge customer interest in various different products and services.

DEFINITION Customer Intelligence (CI) is the process of gathering and analyzing information regarding customers; their details and their activities, in order to build deeper and more effective customer relationships and improve strategic decision making.

UNDERSTANDING OF CUSTOMER Customer intelligence is about knowing your customers. It is about having a deep and useful

understanding of your customers, not only as a market or segments, but one by one. To build a customer-centric company, customer intelligence is imperative. You need to know the following about your customers:

Customer Data Keep all personal and demographic data accurate,

up-to-date, and consistent across all your products and business units. Customer Behavior Keep track of their purchase patterns, call centre calling patterns, internet usage and click patterns, the nature and volume of complaints per customer. Customer Feedback Know what your customers are telling you both their solicited and unsolicited feedback giving you insights concerning their expectations, wants, preferences and perceptions.

Customer Value Calculate the profitability, potential profitability

and scope of influence of every single customer. This intelligence is powerful if you want to grow your business. Customer World Find out their needs and their problems. Learn how customers think and understand trends that are shaping the future world.

Customer Intelligence As Process: The generation, Distribution And Use Of Customer Knowledge As its name implies, customer knowledge is the knowledge about the customer. Customer knowledge includes the knowledge describing customer consumption preferences, favorite contact channels and consumption characteristics and so on.

CUSTOMER KNOWLEDGE

In this, customer knowledge is divided into three classes: 1. Dialogic customer knowledge :- Customer needs are understood through formal or informal interactive dialog between enterprise and customer, between customer and employee and between employee and suppliers. 2. Observational customer knowledge: - This kind of knowledge is gained by observation of status customer uses product or service. Manufacturers of top grade or industrial product like car obtain customer knowledge with this way. 3. Predictive customer knowledge: - This kind of knowledge is gained with the help of special analysis tools and methods of marketing to predict customers need and reaction. Predictive customer knowledge is emphasized in

this paper. Customer knowledge is developed through customer interactions, while customer intelligence is information valuable for strategic decision-making purposes. PROCESS OF CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE Customer intelligence includes the generation, processing and use of customer knowledge.

1) Customer knowledge generation Customer knowledge generation is the process of discovering patterns, rules, concepts and laws among customer data through OLAP analysis, knowledge

discovery and the combination of the both offered through business intelligence (BI) tools. Generally, knowledge discovery is more complex as it includes defining tasks, selecting suitable mining tools (data preparation, mining algorithms, results explanation, etc.) and deciding which areas require human feedback and which areas may be implemented automatically.

a) Customer identification (or customer awareness) Customer identification is about how to identify your customer. If your company does not have an integrated customer data store for use, then your company may be customer-aware challenged. An integrated customer data store is a customeroriented operational data store, which stores an integrated and cleansed source of current customer data. Every time an employee interacts with a customer, they can refer to the data for knowledge on the customers current product and service situation, current contact information, the results of those contacts and outstanding issues. The proper use of current customer information will greatly improve your companys appreciation and awareness of your customers. b) Customer segmentation Suppose your company can identify customers, but do you know which ones are profitable or not? It is difficult to find a satisfactory answer to that with only customer current data analysis. A good source of historical customer data is needed for analysis. A good data warehouse environment may meet

the various data needs for customer segmentation. A data warehouse environment integrates customer data both current and historical and defines the requirement for the analytic applications (data marts) such as customer profitability, sale channel analysis and campaign analytics. The algorithms for these must be agreed upon throughout the business model.

c) Customer satisfaction Can your company accurately measure customer satisfaction? Is customer satisfaction tied to your employees incentives and bonuses? If this is not the case, your company may not have the right environment to be customer-centric.

Building the right environment is not based on advanced measures such as a call-center facility only. It requires adjustment of enterprise culture and organizational structure management models to adapt to the shift from product to customer focus.

d) Customer differentiation Customer differentiation is the process of differentiating the customer according to his economic contribution to your enterprise and delivering value to him

based on the differential. The differentiation is based on analysis of customer lifetime value, purchasing behavior, VIP features and so on. Beyond that, the enterprise must have the ability to act rapidly upon this information. The enterprises interactions with the customer should be based on customer knowledge.

e) Customer loyalty The direct description of customer loyalty is continuous purchasing, which reflects the effective understanding of customer needs. Customer loyalty, which is the apex for customer relationship management, results from iterative and effective use of customer knowledge and is most difficult to reach. Continuous contact with the customer makes the collection and integration of customer data is easier and more effective, yet the problem of loyal customer retention cannot be resolved without support of KDD techniques. With the realization of the necessity of customer loyalty, the great role that KDD techniques play in customer retention is emerging.

2) Customer knowledge distribution: Customer knowledge must reach each part of the organization that needs it. With the help of a common CRM system platform, customer knowledge is stored in a dynamic knowledge base and distributed to locations / departments that need it.

3) Using customer knowledge This describes the final part of CRM that puts customer information and knowledge into action. Many CRM projects and knowledge discoveries are unsuccessful, to a large extent, because generated information and knowledge is not used.

Characteristics of Successful Customer Intelligence

With industries represented ranging from real estate to financial services to retail, we got a pretty good sense of what makes (or breaks!) efforts to gather and use customer information in an effective way across the entire organization so that there is a positive bottom-line impact. Here are 7 characteristics came up with 7 important requirements for successfully creating and leveraging Customer Intelligence across an organization to drive significant bottom-line growth and provide increased value both for the customer and the organization serving that customer:

1. Infrastructure Without the appropriate technological and procedural infrastructure to capture and store customer data, there can obviously be no Customer Intelligence. However, it doesnt have to be expensive or complex depending on your organizations size or complexity, this can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet (or a yellow legal-pad, if your organization is really small!). Hand-in-hand with the technology should come the appropriate procedures for using that technology effectively else no one in the organization will actually use it!

2. Data Equally obvious, without customer data there cant be Customer Intelligence. Once the infrastructure is in place, its got to be used to capture and store the appropriate data (emphasis on appropriate dont capture data that isnt necessary to create greater value both for the customer and for your organization, but do capture all the data that are necessary to do so).

3. People The appropriate people in your organization need to use the infrastructure to capture the appropriate customer data that forms the foundation of Customer Intelligence. Unlike Nike, its not enough to tell these folks to just do it: they need the proper training, incentives, and company culture to support them to do so. And they need to be willing to do it some folks just dont get the need to understand customers and to use that understand to drive business results in a mutually beneficial way, so you may need to make some staff adjustments in order to get this part right.

4. Organization

This is a critical component of good Customer Intelligence; without the proper organizational structure, people will not have the incentives or supporting culture to make CI a reality. An organization must be set up so that people are in reporting structures that address the importance of CI and make it an integral part of the functions that the organization performs. For example, is CI represented as a separate function, are there separate CI teams in different business functional areas to support those areas, is there a centralized Office of Customer Intelligence (or database marketing and analytics, or decision management, or analagous function) that serves as a clearing house and repository for dispensing best practices across the organization and ensures that CI is being properly used throughout? There are many different ways to address it, but CI must be a visible and important part of your organization.

5. Customer engagement CI is a two-way street: if customers feel comfortable with your organization and know that your company values their business and engages in respectful and trusting interactions, then customers will be engaged with your company and will share more of their needs, understanding that the more they share, the better their

customer experience and the better the level of service they will get. So your organization must always do what it can to build customer trust, to improve customer value, to deliver on service promises, and to keep the lines of communication wide open, in order to create the high levels of customer engagement that are necessary for successful CI.

6. Privacy and sensitivity Customers must absolutely feel that their information is kept private and secure, and that they are being protected in all of their interactions with your organization. Weve all seen the stories of organizations dropping the ball on data security: laptops being stolen, data transmissions being intercepted, credit card numbers being stolen, and so on. The repercussion from those breaches are a loss of trust, a loss of customers, and ultimately a loss of business, so this cannot be stated too emphatically: you must do whatever it takes to ensure that all the data on your customers is kept private and secure, and let your customers know that you are doing so, to build the trust required for effective CI.

7. Value

Last but not least, you must always provide more value to your customers through the development and use of CI. Without creating this additional value, there is no reason on earth that a customer would want to share any further information with your organization, plain and simple more Customer Intelligence should always equal more value for the customer. You shouldnt ask for a single piece of additional information from a customer without knowing in advance how that new knowledge is going to allow you to create better value for that customer. Correspondingly, that increased customer value should also yield more profitability for your organization, in terms of better product fit, better retention, increased levels of consolidation, cross-sell, and repeat business, and so on it should be a win-win.

Customer Intelligence is the discipline within Customer Relationship Management that uses Advanced Analytics to optimize all customer interactions. Each customer interaction is an opportunity to improve the

value of your customer, but only if you are able to make the right offer at the right time. Customer Intelligence is the key to provide the necessary customer knowledge. It is the process of collecting customer data, analyzing customer behavior, exploiting customer knowledge and evaluating customer response. 1. Collecting customer data Vital to Customer Intelligence is customer data. The more data you collect on your customers the more knowledge you gain on your customers. But collecting data is not enough, it needs to be transformed in what we call a 360 degrees enterprise view. The enterprise view contains customer characteristics to provide a total picture of the customer. Examples of customer characteristics are age and gender and more advanced characteristics are average spent per visit and number of days since last transaction. An enterprise view can range from 100 to 1000 or more characteristics, depending on the complexity of the organization. Having an enterprise view enables you to analyze the behavior of your customers. Technologies that we use to collect customer data are databases, data warehouses, ODS (Operational Data Storages), ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Load) and

SOA (Service Oriented Architectures).

2. Analyzing customer behavior Past customer behavior is the best prediction for future customer behavior. If you want to sell a car insurance you can look at your customers that already have a car insurance. Not to sell them another car insurance, but to find lookalikes that do not have a car insurance yet. Another example: Which customers will most probably churn in the coming months? Answer: The lookalikes of the customers that churned in the previous months. Can it be that simple? Yes, if you have the necessary requirements: a 360 degrees enterprise view, advanced analytical applications like Predictive Analytics and skilled employees, you are able to turn customer behavior into customer knowledge. Technologies that we use to analyze customer behavior are advanced analytical applications like Statistical Analysis, Forecasting and Predictive Analytics with techniques like association, classification, and segmentation. 3. Exploiting customer knowledge Customer knowledge alone is not enough, it must be made actionable. It needs to be exploited in every interaction with the customer, both outbound and

inbound. In outbound interactions, initiated by the organization, customer knowledge helps you to decide who to contact, when to contact, what to propose and through what channel. In inbound interactions, initiated by the customer, the customer, the channel and the timing are given. Still customer knowledge can help you decide what to propose. Technologies that we use to exploit customer knowledge are campaign management and optimization, event-based marketing and real-time marketing.

4. Evaluating customer response An organization that uses customer intelligence needs to measure the response of each customer interaction. You need to learn from every interaction to improve the relationship with the customer and to increase the customer value. Every interaction, whether it is an outbound interaction or an inbound interaction, must be tested and evaluated. Only then will you become a Predictive Enterprise. Technologies that we use to evaluate customer response are applications for Standard Reporting and Querying like Reporting, Querying, Slicing and Dicing, Dashboards and Alerts.

Benefit of Customer Intelligence Customer intelligence can be difficult to balance and handle correctly. It's difficult enough these days to attain and measure overall profitability. That challenge gets exponentially more difficult when it comes to measuring the profitability of individual customers especially when they're coming to you across multiple channels. Most businesses still don't have a real understanding of who their customers are, which ones are the most profitable, how to project their lifetime value, or where to focus marketing activities and customer loyalty-building campaigns. Customer intelligence is what you need to understand and predict the changing needs of your market. In fact, customer intelligence is the only vendor that provides a complete solution for customer relationship management.

A Customer intelligence system will bring you and your business numerous benefits to improve the way in which your company handles business, basing it fully on the customer. Customer intelligence will aid you to:

Identify your most profitable customers. Optimize multichannel marketing campaigns. Retain your most valuable customers and attract more just like them. Create customer and prospect profiles from both traditional and e-business channels. Discover and plan how to communicate with customers. Anticipate and drive customer needs. It also addresses the challenge of mergers and

acquisitions, allowing newly formed organizations to integrate customer information quickly and to move aggressively to retain customers. Your company has spent a bundle on transaction systems, databases, web sites, contact centres, and market research. You know you've got a lot of valuable information in there somewhere, but how can you ever sort through it efficiently to identify revenue enhancement or cost-savings opportunities? How do you

predict the return of multiple opportunities to priorities their implementation? How do you track the actual results without the use of customer intelligence? Customer Intelligence Practice takes the huge amount of data generated from your existing systems and transforms it to useful, actionable information. This means using data from multiple sources, processing it in compressed time and feeding it back to an expanded audience: to internal decision makers, to the systems themselves and even directly back to the customer. Customer intelligence specialize not only in facilitating this process of discovery and interaction, but also implementing tools to predict and measure results and tangible benefits on an ongoing basis.

Customer intelligence (CI) refers to the information that is extracted data, or derived is from heaps from of raw customer business customer understand which and collected lead to in a various

sources. This information is the key while making decisions can successfully order to managing product life cycles. Companies pay heed to intelligence the analytics behind motivation customers

behavior as in why does he/she purchase something. What drives the customer to a particular purchase is of immense importance to a marketer. However, collating the relevant information and then analyzing the same can be a tedious task, costing you a lot of time and money. We, at Satvik, realize the significance of customer intelligence and offer effective customer intelligence analytics solutions. We understand that customers ultimately impact the bottom-line and profitability of any business. The key to arrest customer churn and retain the customers lies in recognizing customer behavior, through effective customer intelligence analytics. Customer Intelligence Analytics for Enhanced Results We provide cutting-edge analytical solutions that

help you gauge the behavior and experience of your customer base. Our statistical, Artificial Intelligence and operation research techniques help our clients accelerate their businesses in an efficient manner. We use our decision support system and innovative business strategy to help our clients unleash the hidden potential for increased sales. The customer intelligence strategic analytics solution help from you Satvik offers the insights that improve

relationship with your customers Some of the features of our customer intelligence analytics solution are:
1.

Cross-Sell and Up-Sell: Our analytics solution can help you predict which customer can make certain purchases and at what time. You can then contact them for cross-sell opportunities based on their purchase history, customer demographics, psychographic behavior and other key variables using the Attachment & Sequence Analysis and Buyer Model. Customer Profitability: Using our analytics

2.

module, you can distinguish between the most and the least profitable customers, products and channels in order or to determine of your the true contributors Churn detractors Our can companys intelligence identify retention

financial performance.
3.

Management: solution

customer help

analytics helps

you

customers who are at the risk of attrition. This you undertake proactive measures and keep attrition at bay. Scores are delivered through reports for use in retention strategies targeting potential churners. The same churn scores can also be applied to proactive

marketing campaigns designed to improve the overall retention rate.

4.

Consumer Segmentation: This analytics module offers business decision makers the ability to create and more predict accurate customer to segmentations thereby betterallows create customer organizations services. to behavior,

empowering and and bundled sales

targeted product offers, product communications Segmentation different clients to deploy appropriate marketing services strategies respective segments in order to improve overall business performance and customer value.
5.

Response behavior Model: Response modeling is based on customer behavior, uses and spending. Our customer intelligence analytics module gives you key insights into how customers respond to your marketing campaigns.

Customer Intelligence for a Competitive Edge There are countless surveys out there today that stress the importance of customer retention and loyalty. Studies prove that high levels of customer satisfaction result in improved brand image through positive word of mouth, as well as increased profitability through greater repeat business. Additionally, many experts claim that it costs as

much as 10 times more to acquire a new client as it does to keep an existing one. For this reason, customer intelligence has become a critical component of todays reporting and analysis strategies. Why is customer intelligence so vital? Because data about clients often resides in various systems, maintained by different departments across an organization. Sales and marketing teams manage one database, containing information about campaigns and deals in progress. Data about help desk and service calls likely exists in a completely separate application, maintained by the department that oversees post-sales support. And, the finance department keeps billing and payment information in a yet another system. If these systems dont talk to each other, each department acts in a vacuum when dealing with customers, holding conversations and conducting business without being aware of whats happening across the other crucial touch points. However, when all customer-related data is properly aligned, companies can:

Gain complete insight into the customer experience (i.e. what is it like to do business with the

organization)

Better coordinate customer activities, especially those that require cross-department collaboration, throughout the entire organization Identify the best and most profitable customers, and develop campaigns and programs to maximize loyalty and retention among them Fully understand client needs, wants, and preferences, and use that knowledge to create more impactful and successful marketing messages Boost revenues from the existing client base by identifying opportunities to sell additional products and services Uncover problems in services delivery, before they negatively impact customer satisfaction

What are some of the best ways to implement customer intelligence across an enterprise?

Create a centralized repository of all pertinent customer-related information Provide fast easy access to that repository to all staff in customer-facing roles via intuitive business intelligence tools Set critical customer-related metrics, and measure them continuously Use predictive analytics to anticipate customer behaviors based on past actions

Creating True Customer Intelligence Gather more actionable insights using a blend of cloudbased VoC and financial data. Customers share a plethora of information about themselves in their interactions with companies, including information about their needs and preferences. Meanwhile, companies gather quite a bit of behavioral information about customers, including product usage and purchasing trends gleaned from transactions. But to-date, Voice of the Customer (VoC) data and CRM data have been separated like oil and water, making it difficult for decision-makers to analyze customer interactions, develop meaningful product offers, and deliver personally tailored marketing. The key to success lies in successfully marrying qualitative customer feedback with more quantitative CRM data, or what Allegiance refers to as Voice of Customer intelligence (VOCi). This is most effectively accomplished through a cloud computing-based architecture that provides decision-makers with easy-to-use reporting and analytics tools that help develop compelling business plans, inform marketing decisions, and guide service strategies.

Supported by expert insights from Allegiance and Peppers & Rogers Group, readers of this white paper will learn how to effectively blend customer feedback and CRM data to determine the actionable steps needed to improve business outcomes. Readers will also learn:

The strengths and shortcomings of using VoC and Four steps for marrying cloud-supported VoC and Recommended approaches for addressing the key Multiple benefits gained by obtaining customer The business benefits that EMC and Nicor National

CRM insights individually

CRM insights

cultural and organizational challenges

intelligence "in the cloud"

have seen from deploying these models

Customer intelligence benefited to following Medical professionals can benefit from customer

intelligence While workers in many professions are seeing the benefits of technologically advanced business intelligence products every day, the upside for the healthcare industry could be much more important than the bottom line, according to American Medical News. The same technology that lets businesses track behavior and buying patterns to get a better picture of their consumer bases can be used for electronic health records to allow for an unprecedented degree of flexibility and pattern recognition, the news source said. Ahmed Ghouri told AMedNews of such that the business are also

intelligence

applications

systems

applicable to medical practices. "Apart from the moral and ethical imperative to do what is the best and the safest and the most effective treatments for patients ... physicians are also businessmen," he said in an interview. Electronic health records are the subject of serious debate in the medical community. While they offer undeniable upsides in cost efficiency and flexibility, some question whether currently available security measures are enough to guarantee the safety of private medical and financial information from patients.

The Benefits of Customer Intelligence for Media Realtime access to customer intelligence provides the platform media organisations need to take advantage of new behavioural ad serving technologies at a time when interactive medias share of advertising expenditure in the UK is set to top 30%. With better customer behaviour information upon which to base their business strategies, organisations can command higher rates from advertisers. In addition, knowing more about a customers behaviours across all business platforms enables an organisation to promote, up-sell and cross-sell services more accurately to individual customers as well as enabling them proactively to tune the customer experience and reduce the risk of churn.

Customer intelligence: Business benefits

The process of managing customer intelligence is becoming increasingly difficult because of the large amount of customer data that is received through multiple online channels. can help you get good quality data about who your customers are, by collaborating with them to find solutions to their issues and satisfy their needs. Collecting this customer intelligence in a more efficient manner also provides more insight into your customer lifecycles and helps measure overall profitability, customer retention rates and loyalty.