Greetings!  My name is Brandon Purcell and I am the new Senior Analyst serving Customer Insights professionals at Forrester.  I will cover customer analytics which uses advanced analytics to analyze customer data to optimize customer-focused programs and initiatives to drive acquisition, retention, cross-sell/upsell, loyalty, personalization, and contextual marketing. I am a recovering customer analytics practitioner and come to Forrester from a boutique consulting firm where I led a team of data scientists that helped our clients solve their urgent business challenges by harnessing the latent value in their customer data.  A few highlights from my former life:

  • I helped develop a best in class Voice of the Customer program at one of the country’s largest banks
  • I created and led many trainings in business applications of predictive analytics
  • I built a patented algorithm that uses geospatial data to predict a person’s future location

Like most data scientists, I was a creative writing major in college and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Republic of Benin in West Africa.  (That was a joke!)  I also spent 5 years trading everything imaginable on the floors of the American Stock Exchange and Chicago Board Options Exchange before moving to the west coast to get my MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

 

We’re just getting started

I have seen the value of customer analytics and believe companies have only begun to scratch the surface.  Marketing, the traditional consumer of customer analytics, is just starting to operationalize processes for optimization, churn reduction, and segmentation.  The ROI on these initiatives is real, tangible, and quick.

The value of customer analytics, however, does not solely benefit marketing and businesses are extracting it in other areas with systems of insight.  Some innovative organizations are using customer analytics to improve how products are developed and services are delivered.  Highly regulated industries such as financial services are using it to address and even prevent compliance and regulatory issues.  And customer analytics professionals are mining data to identify and quantify the impact of customer pain points to deliver a superior customer experience.

In the Age of the Customer, customer data is an organization’s chief asset, and customer analytics is the key to unlocking the value of that asset.  My aim is to provide you with guidance on how best to tap into that value, and to report on innovations in analytics that are bound to reshape the way companies do business.

 

Give me some data!

I like to practice what I preach.  The more data I have about my audience, the more I can tailor my research to your specific needs.  I am working on my upcoming research agenda over the next few weeks so watch this space for more.

So, I’d love to hear from you.  What is your role, and what are you hoping to get from Customer Analytics?

I’m looking forward to a spirited dialogue around advanced analytics. Reach me via briefings or inquiries and I’d be happy to chat. 

-Brandon