Customer Intelligence Software: Key Features & Use Cases

What exactly is customer intelligence software?

With customer service team expectations rising and customers expecting a more personalized service, getting a 360-degree view of your customers’ needs, behaviors, and preferences is mission-critical.

If a customer calls complaining about an incorrect order for a second time, you want your agent to know the full details about both orders, including the original attempted resolution and the customer’s previous concerns. You don’t want multiple agents to inquire about each order or for the customer to repeat the entire situation, which will undoubtedly lead to frustration.

Customer intelligence (CI) software can help businesses close knowledge gaps, and it is often a crucial part of many brands’ customer experience strategies.

What Is Customer Intelligence Software?

Customer intelligence software is a type of customer experience technology that helps businesses gather, analyze, and leverage customer data regarding purchase behavior and intent. 

These tools go beyond simple demographic information and provide a holistic view of customer needs, behaviors, and preferences. They often collect customer information from third-party data platforms with platform integrations or API access. 

Some of these technologies may leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning, or automation to streamline data synching, provide insights, and improve data management.

For instance, Nextiva displays essential customer intel when responding to an inbound request (e.g., phone call, email, SMS, etc.).

Customer intelligence tools may, for example, consolidate the following data:

• Customer intent behavior, like purchase history and online viewing activity.
• Customer support interactions, including tickets filed through help desk software.
• Customer feedback, which may include feedback directly pulled from customer surveys.

These in-depth customer analytics and insights empower customer experience (CX) leaders to make more informed decisions that can boost customer loyalty, engagement, and business growth.

How CI Software Drives Exceptional CX

CI software can help businesses create outstanding customer experiences by providing essential customer data that allow brands to better anticipate their customers’ needs, address concerns, and improve their buyer’s journey in many ways.

Improve customer success

Customer intelligence technology provides a complete overview of customers’ needs to your team members. This means your customer support agents, account executives, and sales team can all deliver more personalized experiences based on individual customer preferences at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Your customer support team, for example, can offer better solutions when resolving customer complaints. Account executives can check in regularly with customers with well-timed questions, product education, and suggestions, potentially including upsells and cross-sells to increase overall conversion rates.

Improved customer success allows your company to develop strong customer loyalty, which is a clear competitive advantage in today’s market.

Reduce customer churn

When you have a smarter customer experience, you’ll increase customer satisfaction (CSAT) and, as a result, retain more customers. By more easily identifying and proactively addressing customer pain points throughout the journey, companies can anticipate customer behaviors, needs, and potential problems.

Businesses can identify trends and weak spots in the customer journey by establishing resolutions using intelligent customer experience measures and automated, streamlined, or AI-driven support.

Retention rate = [(End customers – New customers) / Start customers] * 100

Enhance brand reputation

Creating a positive CX can fuel word-of-mouth recommendations like almost nothing else, and CI tools empower businesses to deliver exactly that. Better data means that brands can discover new ways to establish customer loyalty and support throughout the customer journey. A better customer journey means happier customers and increased profitability.

Data-driven decision-making

CI software can help you transform customer data into actionable insights, which can be used to inform strategic decisions across all departments. This can include product development, marketing, and customer support. Some platforms offer real-time analytics or AI-driven suggestions that can be used to optimize business processes and improve customer relationships. You can sell more, through upsells and cross-sells with more data at your fingertips.

Key Features of Customer Intelligence Tools

When researching customer management solutions, knowing which key features to focus on is important. Let’s review some of the most common and important functionality to look for in CI software.

Data aggregation

CI software gathers customer data from various touchpoints, including customer surveys, customer data platforms, CRM systems, call center analytics, social media interactions, website analytics, phone calls, and support tickets. You’ll get data from individual customer profiles to better spot trends across the customer journey.

Data unification

By aggregating data from multiple data sources into a single tool, customer intelligence software can break down data silos. This makes creating a single customer view possible, providing a more complete picture of each customer and leading to better customer insights. 

CI software can also help you to more accurately track and interpret data, making it easier to piece together the customer journey that may otherwise have been more difficult to establish.

Customer segmentation

CI software allows businesses to segment their customer base according to specific characteristics. Customers who were acquired through referrals, for example, may be found to retain longer, and those who purchase software for certain use cases may submit more support ticket requests.

Businesses can use this information to tailor their approach accordingly, optimizing the CX and ideally eliminating or reducing potential pain points with product and policy changes or customer success programs.

Advanced analytics and actionable reporting

Powerful analytic tools, aided by detailed metrics tracking, can help you identify trends and patterns in customer interactions, revealing hidden insights into customer data.

As a result, CI tools often translate complex data into clear and actionable reports that guide improvement efforts.

Signs You Need to Invest in Customer Intelligence

If you’re wondering whether or not you need a customer intelligence solution, there’s a good chance you could benefit from it. Here are several clear signs that you may have a more urgent need for these tools:

• You’re struggling to make sense of scattered customer data.
• You’re getting inconsistent customer feedback and believe segmentation data could help explain why.
• Your decision-making is based on gut feelings, not data-driven insights.
• Your CX is inconsistent across touchpoints.
• You’re facing a high customer churn rate.
• You’re ready to scale your business and need a deeper understanding of your customer base.
• You’re struggling with CX data collection.
• You’re overwhelmed or don’t know how to make sense of data from multiple platforms.
• You’re offering omnichannel support but are trying to determine how customers interact with each touchpoint.
• You’re struggling to retain customers drawn in through marketing campaigns.

If you’re experiencing low CSAT rates (or think you might be), you can leverage real-time data analytics to identify accurate trends and improve your CX.

See Your Customers More Clearly With Nextiva

Customer intelligence can be invaluable for better understanding your customers and improving their experiences through data-informed decision-making.

There are plenty of customer relationship tools available, and there are also specialized platforms that offer some built-in CI capabilities. For example, businesses interested in harnessing more of their call and support interaction data should look to platforms like Nextiva.

Nextiva offers advanced analytic data for multiple support touchpoints. Our call center analytics, for example, can help businesses track the following KPIs:

• Customer-centered metrics, like CSAT scores, net promoter scores, and customer sentiment data.
• Results-driven metrics, like first call resolution rates and average response times.
• Agent performance data, including call volume and customer rating.

Nextiva also offers unified customer service tools with customer insights and analytics. Our AI-powered CX software for contact centers includes dashboards to track historical customer trends across multiple support platforms, allowing for ongoing CX improvement. With Nextiva, you can leverage insights regarding customer sentiment analysis, track trends in key phrases, and even automate customer support aspects to improve CX quickly.

If you’re looking for a unified, 360-degree view of each customer to understand them better, offer personalized support, and strengthen their journey across all touchpoints (including phone, SMS, email, live chat, and more), we can help. Our CX platform offers omnichannel features, including detailed and granular analytics with real-time data. This makes it easier to track CX measures and customer success strategies live as you watch the impact of your efforts alter your results.

Keep your customer data updated in real time with Nextiva’s Customer Experience Suite. 👇