Building analytic muscle to learn about your customers is a top priority for today’s outperforming chief executives. Big data is an unquestionably powerful tool to improve your knowledge about your customers.
Many executives are talking about “big data” these days. Another popular term associated with big data is “consumer insights.” The implication seems to be that statistics garnered through massive consumer data will yield consumer insights. Not necessarily.
Genuine insight is a deep, intuitive understanding into a person or group of people. IBM’s SPSS and other exciting technologies provide us with tremendous analytical prowess. But they don’t tap into our intuition. And they can’t interpret the meaning behind the numbers.
To truly unearth consumer insights we must go deeper than analytical tools can go. We must access our shared humanity—our deeper nature—that binds us together as human beings. We must endeavor to peer into the hearts, minds, and souls of our customers if we are to mine for authentic consumer insights.
I know, this might sound a little too “soft” or abstract; it might sound like a lot of work too. But it’s meaningful work that translates to hard results. It helps us connect more deeply with the lifeblood of our businesses—our cherished customers. It can also influence our company’s culture as it too is made up of human beings with dreams, feelings, desires, and needs.
There’s another unspoken reward that comes from taking a humanistic approach to customer intelligence: In endeavoring to understand your customers as individual human beings you may learn a thing or two about yourself.
Analytics is a tool, not an answer. Get genuinely curious about learning about your customers. Connect with our shared humanity. It will bring your consumer insights to life.