Customer Intelligence is often, the most overlooked, undervalued gold mine of any business and not just marketing and product. I’ve seen it over and over.

Customers, EXISTING ones, are the starting point, the anchor …. and the first domino for everything you do.

For 20 years, I have obsessed over understanding my customers (customer community). And I cobbled together, by hand, observing/listening, and talking to hundreds of my customers (the builders, the agencies) in order to understand them and their journey better.

And ALSO using every piece of data – analytics to customer metrics.

My thesis — If I know, understand and then support my customers better than anyone …. that becomes my unique competitive advantage. My moat.

So my aim in Customer Intelligence is ….. I want to be able to put on my Customer VR headset and see the world as they do ….. walk in their shoes …. and support them better than anyone else in that.

Now we have AI to help …. to analyze, sort, categorize, see what we don’t see … and most importantly make connections.

To ultimately …. know WHO they are … what drives them …. what’s in their way …. where they are in the journey and what they need and want most.

So my fundamental approach as an entrepreneur, marketer, community leader is always to ….

START with the customer.

But better yet, start with your BEST customers … the most profitable, the happiest …

And when you know THAT group better than anyone …. you can better serve and support them like their best friend and partner.

Customer Intelligence that is deep, focused, ongoing …. UNLOCKS better ….

* Sales & Marketing — reaching them at the right time, at the right place, with the right message they need to help them in their journey 

* Product — know them and build better products, features – see the opportunities and gaps

* Lifecycle / Retention / Engagement / Satisfaction — because you have a foundation to constantly refine what you do for them …. you can anticipate and get ahead of them, for them, and you

But all of this is …. BETTER Business Decision Making and Strategy.

If customers are truly our focus … then ….

Customers ARE our strategy.

And …. the most important compass we have.

***

I’ve been taking all my own Customer Intelligence process and distilling it, refining it, updating it to utilize AI — and every data and human feedback point I can — to ultimately create customer profiles ….. real-human ones ….. that become the ROADMAP for sales, marketing, product etc ……

If you’re interested in me sharing more as I go, let me know

This is my lived experience (it was how I ran iThemes for a decade), now just accelerated, tuned up even better with AI … but more live case studies would be helpful.