What is customer analytics?
Customer analytics means using data to understand your customers. Seeing trends of where customers are delighted or disappointed, how often they engage support, and whether they are likely to churn or upgrade.
All businesses have multiple data sources that each contain part of the overall picture of a customer. Bringing those together into a single location is at the heart of customer analytics.
What is product analytics?
Product analytics means using data to understand how customers use a product. You can track things like how long users spend on a product, which features they use, how often they log in, and even where they get confused.
You can also aggregate this data to understand general trends of product usage by customer, time of day, and industry.
Understanding Other Types of Customer Analytics
What is customer 360?
Customer 360 is a complete view of a customer. Each department and system in a business has some data about customers. Unifying all this data, and presenting it in a combined way, allows anyone in a company to understand the customer and make better decisions to improve service to the customer.
What is customer journey analytics?
Customer journey refers to all the interactions a customer has with a business. Each department and system in a business stores data about their interactions with a customer.
By pulling all this data together, you can get a complete picture, a story of the journey the customer takes through your company.
Without doing so, it is impossible to understand, from the customer’s perspective, what it is like to do business with your company.
Why is customer analytics important?
Customer analytics unlocks visibility into customers that most companies don’t have. By understanding your customers, you can make improvements in many areas of your business to find, serve, and keep your customers better.
What is the relationship between customer analytics and product analytics?
Customers interact with your company in more ways than just using your software. Product analytics come directly from your software, but customer analytics look at the whole customer experience analytics which includes product analytics as a subset of data.
For example, a grocery store may have a mobile app (their software product) from which we can derive product analytics metrics such as app activity (open rates, time using product) or content metrics (which parts of the app customers most engage with). The total customer experience analytics will blend in data from outside the app, such as membership or rewards data, average purchase frequency, average cart values, categories of interest and the like.
Benefits of Using Product & Customer Analytics
Using product and customer analytics allows you to gain clarity on customer behavior, optimize your revenue streams, enhance product usage, and elevate the overall customer experience. Read on, as we’ll break down each of these benefits below.
Insight Into Your Customers’ Behavior & Journey
Instant Analytics brings clarity to your customer behavior analytics. Every interaction, every touchpoint, from the first introduction to loyal advocacy, becomes transparent. With customer analytics solutions, you can:
- Predict potential customer churn, helping you act before they leave.
- Gauge satisfaction through precise scores, pinpointing areas that require attention.
Conduct cohort analysis, segmenting your audience to recognize distinct patterns and trends.
Whether you're charting the journey of a newly acquired user or deep-diving into long-term customer behavior, you can tailor customer analytics to your business needs. For both emerging startups and established SMBs, understanding your customer's journey is no longer a luxury—it's a necessity.
Harness the insights, make data-backed decisions, and drive your business forward.
Improve Customer Experience Through Customer-Centric Insights
At the heart of every successful business lies a satisfied customer. Customer analytics tools allow you to uncover actionable insights that offer a comprehensive customer 360 view, tailoring your offerings perfectly to their needs.
Discover patterns with customer journey analytics and identify touchpoints that resonate or might be causing friction. Use customer behavior analytics to understand preferences, pain points, and desires, enabling a personalized approach that captivates your audience.
Refine every aspect of your business, be it the digital interface, support interactions, or product innovations, using data-driven insights. With customer and product analytics, you can transform data into a tool that nurtures loyalty, boosts satisfaction, and drives relentless growth.
How to use customer analytics?
Customer analytics can be used to improve marketing effectiveness, sales closure rates, customer satisfaction, and product optimizations.
We’ve found the easiest way to see where customer analytics would be valuable is to ask any head of a department what they wish they knew about their customers.
Real-Life Examples of Customer Analytics
One example of a company using data and analytics to improve customer experience is a Datateer customer, Equinix, which analyzes various trends in customer behavior to predict who is unhappy and likely to churn. Sales and customer success focus on these customers to see if they can solve the underlying issue.
A second example of a company improving the customer experience is another Datateer customer, AppCast, who tracks the effectiveness of job advertising costs and advises customers on how to optimize these costs.
Overview of Product & Customer Analytics Solutions & Services
Below are some common product analytics tools and customer analytics solutions and services companies use to gain those valuable insights.
Product & Customer Analytics Software
Customer and product analytics software allows you to analyze customer data to understand your customer better. Typical analyses cover product usage, customer support, and sales, as well as cohort analyses and predictive analyses on key customer metrics. Meaning… (give example or clarification).
Data Model Management Services
Customer analytics can be used to meet the unique demands of different sectors. Whether you're in e-commerce, healthcare, or finance, using industry-specific customer analytics equips you with data models that resonate with your unique challenges. Below is an overview of various industry data models.
Industry Data Models
- Adtech
- Retail
- E-Commerce
- Customer 360
- Customer Journey
- Telehealth
- HR/Recruiting
- Finance
- SaaS KPIs
- Product Analytics
By diving deep into your industry's specifics, you ensure your strategies are grounded in relevant data. Using customer analytics allows you to harness the power of metrics, KPIs, and visualizations without the stress of creating custom data infrastructure. With robust data model management, your data is mapped into industry data models, ensuring that metrics are auto-refreshed and always accurate.
Product Analytics and Customer Analytics Consulting
In today's digital landscape, understanding your product's performance and user engagement is essential. Customer analytics provides insights into user behavior and feature usage, helping you make informed decisions.
If you’re just getting started in customer analytics, a consultant can offer you valuable insights tailored to your specific business needs, enhancing the effectiveness of your data analysis efforts. Product analytics solutions enable you to monitor user activity, identifying what works well and what may require adjustments. This includes examining metrics such as usage patterns, churn rates for specific features, and user feedback.
For startups and small to medium-sized businesses in growth phases, making data-driven decisions is crucial. By utilizing product and customer analytics, you can ensure your product evolves in response to user needs, fostering continuous improvement.
Related: What Is Analytics as a Service (AaaS)? Overview of Data Analytics Services & Consulting
Get Started With A Product & Customer Analytics Company
In conclusion, analyzing customer analytics is vital for businesses seeking to enhance their understanding of customer behavior and improve overall experiences.
By integrating insights from both customer and product analytics, organizations can create a comprehensive view of their customers, enabling them to make informed decisions that drive growth and satisfaction. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, leveraging these analytics will not only help businesses identify trends and address pain points but also foster stronger relationships with their customers.
Embracing customer analytics is no longer optional; it is essential for any business aiming to thrive in a competitive market.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How does data analytics help find customer segments?
By tracking the attributes of each customer, grouping them becomes easy. A simple example is segmenting by geography. Other examples include grouping by cohort (when the customer signed on) and buying behavior.
How to present customer analytics insights?
Customer analytics insights are best presented in an exploratory medium such as a dashboard. Most people who gain familiarity with customer metrics want to explore further and find interesting, actionable insights.