Customer insights

Why are customer insights important?

Customer continuity has brought new complexities for businesses. As consumer expectations evolve, companies face increasing pressure to deliver products and services that feel relevant and personalized. Gaining precise customer insights is no longer optional—it’s the foundation for informed decision-making.

These insights mitigate the risk of costly investments by revealing exactly what customers want and need, ensuring businesses allocate resources effectively. They also strengthen software ROI by aligning product features and updates with user expectations, increasing adoption rates and satisfaction.

Customer insights refine the buying process, making it smoother and more intuitive. They inform strategies for addressing specific challenges, enabling businesses to deliver tailored, meaningful customer support. This level of engagement promotes customer loyalty, encouraging repeat interactions and long-term relationships.

Insights also improve marketing campaigns by connecting customer behavior to actionable strategies, targeting the right audiences. Over time, this focus on understanding and responding can maximize customer lifetime value, creating a more resilient and customer-centric organization.

What are the goals of customer insights?

Businesses rely on customer insights to guide critical product and service delivery decisions. These insights offer precise, actionable data and shape how products, services, and strategies evolve to meet customer needs in the long run. 

While different goals will take precedence depending on the organization, some common goals across sectors can be agreed upon as leading motivators. These are:

Guiding product and service development

• Identify user needs and preferences to guide product improvements.
• Forecasting the adoption of a new product, ensuring it aligns with customer expectations.
• Spot emerging trends and unmet demands, directing development priorities.
• Drive product iterations based on real-time feedback and usage patterns.

Improving customer support and engagement

• Provide data-driven insights into common customer issues, allowing for proactive support.
• Help teams personalize responses based on detailed customer profiles and behaviors.
• Strengthen customer care with DAP (Digital Adoption Platforms) to guide users through processes and ensure smooth adoption.
• Reveal friction points in the customer experience role in digital transformation (DX), guiding adjustments to reduce barriers.
• Inform training for customer service teams based on frequent customer inquiries.
• Improve customer continuity by identifying patterns in customer behavior and ensuring ongoing engagement.
• Support the customer discovery process by tailoring recommendations based on insights from earlier interactions.
• Track customer digital adoption progress, offering additional support to enhance overall satisfaction.
• Analyze customer retention cost to identify the most effective long-term strategies for keeping customers engaged.

Refining marketing strategies

• Use insights to craft targeted marketing campaigns based on customer behaviors and preferences.
• Leverage the customer onboarding journey map to identify key touchpoints and opportunities for engagement.
• Optimize content and timing, aligning messaging with customer needs at each stage.
• Measure and refine campaign performance by tracking customer reactions and engagement.

Who is involved in customer insights?

A deep understanding of customer preferences and behaviors requires input from various stakeholders inside and outside the organization. 

These insights guide product development, improve customer interactions, and inform department strategic decisions.

Internal stakeholders

• CEO: The CEO is responsible for defining the overarching vision and ensuring that customer insights are integrated into the company’s strategic direction. Their leadership ensures that the organization prioritizes customer-centric goals.
• Customer insights teams gather and analyze data to identify patterns, trends, and customer expectations. They transform raw data into actionable insights that shape business strategies.
• Customer service teams: Front-line teams interact directly with customers and often gather the most immediate feedback. They provide real-time insights into customer satisfaction, pain points, and emerging needs.
• Sales teams: Sales professionals rely on customer insights to tailor their pitches, improve conversion rates, and address specific customer concerns. They help shape product offerings based on customer feedback.
• Marketing teams: Marketers leverage customer insights to craft targeted campaigns, segment audiences, and refine messaging. They use data to create personalized experiences that resonate with different customer groups.
• Data analysts extract meaning from customer data, transforming numbers and metrics into useful insights that help other departments make informed decisions. They support the organization’s efforts in tracking key customer trends.
• Customer advocates: These employees represent the voice of the customer, ensuring that customer feedback is prioritized in product development, service offerings, and customer engagement initiatives.

External stakeholders

• Consulting experts: Consultants bring specialized expertise and offer guidance on effectively gathering, analyzing, and applying customer insights. They may also provide tools and methodologies for tracking customer sentiment and behaviors.
• Third-party research firms: Independent research firms conduct large-scale studies and surveys to gather insights on broader customer trends. These external perspectives offer a different layer of validation to internal insights.
• Technology vendors: Technology vendors supply the software and platforms for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing customer data. Their tools enable organizations to track real-time customer behaviors and adjust strategies accordingly.
• Survey providers: Companies specializing in gathering customer feedback through surveys provide an invaluable direct channel to understanding customer preferences, satisfaction levels, and unmet needs.

What is required for success in customer insights?

To succeed in customer insights, organizations must focus on key areas that directly impact their ability to understand and meet customer needs. 

A Salesforce survey found that 51% of people would share personal information for discounts, 33% for improved content, and 14% for relevant ads, while 27% refused to share any data.

Let’s take a look at what these success factors may involve:

Tracking customer actions to simplify their journey

Understanding customer actions through their interactions provides a clear path to optimizing experiences. Observing where customers face friction allows businesses to address pain points and design smoother journeys. Simply mapping their steps can uncover patterns that improve product navigation and user satisfaction.

Position products effectively in the market

Accurate product positioning ensures your offerings resonate with the right audience. Identifying customer needs and preferences helps tailor messages highlighting your product’s value. This keeps customers engaged and more likely to convert.

Identify and segment customer personas

Segmenting customers into distinct personas is vital for personalizing strategies. Analyzing demographic and behavioral data helps create targeted approaches that cater to specific needs, making customer interactions more meaningful and effective.

Use Multiple channels to collect insights

Relying on a single source of data limits the depth of customer understanding. Integrating multiple methods, like surveys, interviews, analytics, and feedback, offers a richer and more complete view. A combination of these tools ensures comprehensive insights that guide better decisions.

Why do customer insights projects fail?

Customer insights projects often stumble due to gaps in planning, execution, or communication. 

Research from Mapp reveals that 53% of marketers struggle to identify website visitors, a critical step for gathering insights and improving CX. Additionally, 54% cite insufficient customer insights as the top obstacle to delivering better brand experiences.

These challenges can hinder the ability to gain actionable insights, delaying progress and causing resources to be wasted.

Unclear objectives

Projects often fail when teams lack defined goals for what the insights should achieve. Data collection and analysis become unfocused without specific outcomes, leading to irrelevant or unusable findings. Clear objectives ensure that all stakeholders work toward the same purpose.

Inadequate data quality and integration

Poor-quality data scattered across multiple platforms is a common obstacle. Inconsistent formats or missing information make creating a comprehensive view of the customer challenging. Effective data integration and cleaning processes are necessary for reliable insights.

Insufficient collaboration among teams

Insights projects often involve marketing, product, and data teams. Miscommunication or siloed efforts can lead to conflicting strategies. Regular cross-functional meetings and shared tools foster alignment and streamline the discovery process.

Overreliance on a single data source

Relying on one source for insights limits the depth of understanding. Customer behaviors are nuanced and require multiple perspectives, such as surveys, analytics, and direct feedback, to paint a full picture. Diversified data inputs improve accuracy and relevance.

Customer insights use cases

Customer insight’s impact on industries includes addressing user behavior and enabling more effective strategies for digital adoption. 

Here are three detailed scenarios demonstrating how customer insights can remedy CX blindspots:

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform

Scenario: A software company finds users abandoning their onboarding process halfway.

Method: The company uses session tracking to identify confusing steps and gathers direct feedback from users.

Outcome: The onboarding process is redesigned with step-by-step guidance and prompts, reducing confusion and improving user retention.

Cloud services

Scenario: A cloud platform observes low adoption of collaboration tools among its clients.

Method: Surveys and usage analytics reveal clients are unaware of the tools or unsure of their benefits.

Outcome: The company simplifies tutorials, offers in-app tooltips, and provides workshops, increasing engagement with these features.

IT support

Scenario: An IT solutions provider receives recurring complaints about slow customer support.

Method: Ticket data analysis reveals delays caused by inefficient routing and a lack of escalation protocols.

Outcome: Teams restructure workflows, automate routing, and implement tiered escalation, leading to faster resolutions and better customer feedback.