Acxiom, the global leader in customer intelligence, unveiled a comprehensive study that underscores the paradox of modern customer intelligence: While many businesses recognize its importance, few realize its full potential to create truly differentiating, market-leading experiences.
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Key Findings
The study, Customer Intelligence: How Well Do You Understand Your Customers?, provided an in-depth assessment of US and UK brands’ customer intelligence (CI) maturity – how well these businesses use data-driven CI to understand and engage with people across the entire customer journey.
The findings revealed a startling reality. Only a tiny fraction of brands (4%) have become masters of customer intelligence, seamlessly integrating CI across their organizations. This accomplishment sets these businesses apart, giving them a distinctive edge over their competition.
Challenges and Contradictions
The report also highlights the main challenges and contradictions that brands face in their data-driven strategies, such as:
- While 56% of businesses align their CI function with company objectives, only 7% report CEO-level advocacy.
- Although 46% of businesses use a blend of first-, second-, and third-party data, just 9% utilize an identity resolution to unify customer signals into a single view, impacting their ability to deliver meaningful experiences.
- While 60% of businesses claim to use advanced CI analytics, only 23% integrate artificial intelligence or machine learning into their analytics capabilities.
- Despite 63% of businesses establishing CI Centers of Excellence to share best practices, only 22% have implemented real-time collaborative data platforms accessible to all teams.
- Data quality, integration issues, skill and resource shortages, organizational silos, privacy concerns, and technology complexities are common barriers impeding CI maturity.
Conclusion
“Customer Intelligence is the essential catalyst that drives brand growth and success,” said Tate Olinghouse, Chief Client Officer at Acxiom. “Our research indicates without deep CI, businesses risk falling behind the competition and losing market share.”
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The report, commissioned by Acxiom and independently conducted by international strategy and research agency MTM, is based on a survey of 200 senior decision-makers from US and UK brands across various sectors. To access the complete report, please click here.
Acxiom partners with the world’s leading brands to create customer intelligence, enabling data-driven marketing experiences that generate value for people and for brands. The experts in identity, the ethical use of data, cloud-first customer data management, and analytics solutions, Acxiom makes the complex marketing ecosystem work, applying customer intelligence wherever brands and customers meet. By helping brands genuinely understand people, Acxiom enables experiences so relevant and respectful, people are willing to explore new brands and stay loyal to those they love. For more than 50 years, Acxiom has improved clients’ customer acquisition, growth, and retention. With locations in the US, UK, China, Poland, and Germany, Acxiom is a registered trademark of Acxiom LLC and is part of The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (IPG).
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