Putting customer intelligence to work

Knowing your audience is a necessity, the ability to translate key points of data into actionable information is vital. Recognizing the difference on a reoccurring basis requires balance and the valued perspective of a third party providing customer intelligence.

Every brand wants its customers to care deeply about its products and services—to feel an immediate and deep connection to the brand. What no company wants is to be met with indifference: if consumers don’t care about you, and see something more appealing about your competitor’s range of products and services, you’ve lost your market. 

Customer intelligence can be revealed in a variety of ways: transactional data, ad-hoc surveys, focus groups, anecdotal evidence from front-line employees, and so on. Yet global brands are finding that these traditional sources don’t provide the actionable insight required to make confident decisions. They’re in need of a source of customer intelligence that provides context to transactional data, that’s more dependable than ad-hoc surveys, that’s more agile and timely than focus groups and more rigorous than anecdotal evidence. 

The DeWALT Insights Panel replaces the impersonal, expensive and time-consuming methods of traditional customer research. With real-time access to more than 10,000 active tradespeople and consumers, DeWALT tests, launches and demonstrates the value of premium products. 

Community members feel heard and are comfortable playing an active role in the design and product development process because DeWALT engages with the insight community on an ongoing basis. Product testers respond faster, research is empowered to make product lifecycle decisions, and DeWALT has saved over $1 million in study costs in 2016 and close to $6 million since establishing the DeWALT Insights Panel.

‍“We can use one resource for the entire lifespan of a project,” said Shannon Chenoweth, Market Research Manager. “Once products have launched, we can follow up easily with satisfaction and quality surveys.” 

Gauging the pulse of your brand’s customer intelligence is a game-changer but, data cannot dance all by itself–the customer is in charge of choosing to buy and engage. Intuition fuels the ‘how I want it when I want it’ economy.

Coke has given its fans ownership. Consumers own the brand experience–the “Share a Coke” campaign literally put their name on the bottle. 

We are at the intersection of culture and communication where we don’t even own our own brands anymore. It is a shared experience where the consumer is king.

At Hierarchy, Inc. every insight is filtered through a channel-agnostic strategy. It’s an agency built with data and consumer understanding at an atomic level. The data is all there and available. It’s just a question of how you action it.