Customer Insight - Invest During the Recession

'Customer Insight' is a process that begins with knowing and understanding what your customers want, and contact centres are advised to invest during the recession to get an edge over competitors.  To find out more visit http://www.themarketer.co.uk/articles/opinion/readers-e-mails/customer-insight/

Companies are told to “be obsessed with your customers, not the communities”.  This advice suggests that each customer should be treated as an individual and good customer insight will help companies build a good relationship with customers. 

More than four in five finance directors in the UK say they are in favour of investing in customer spending during the recession.  This may come as a surprise to most customer service and marketing directors, but finance directors believe that the credit crunch is the right time to invest in marketing and customer analysis - so customer insight is more important than ever. 

During a recovery period, companies are more likely to find a way to move forward by getting a competitive edge and differentiated USPs over other competitors.  This view can be backed up by a new survey by database marketing and consumer insight firm KDB. 

KDB surveyed 1,000 finance directors across the UK and the results tell us that strengthening investment in marketing and customer insight during the recession will become a major benefit to companies in the long term. 

The report by KBD also gives evidence that investing in customer insight and spending time on a fresh marketing strategy had already made calculable differences to many existing companies.  The survey does also suggest that most company directors are fully aware of the importance of customer insight and marketing during the financial downturn.  This would indicate that the biggest barrier facing companies today is simply financial. 

Bigger businesses have been naturally more supportive of investing more money in customer insight when finances are already so tight.  The survey showed that 100 per cent of firms employing 250-1000 people were supportive of the idea, compared to 80 per cent of firms employing 10 people or less. 

The hotel and catering and media and marketing sectors were most responsive, with100 per cent of the firms surveyed in these sectors hoping to spend more time and money on understanding customer insight and marketing.  Surprisingly, the retail sector had only 72 per cent of respondents backing the idea. 

Even when budgets have shrunk, contact centres are advised to spend more time and money on customer insight and marketing for big benefits in the future.