Welcome To The Customer Intelligence Blog!

[Posted by Carl Doty]

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Notice anything new and different?  You should!  Welcome to Forrester’s new role-based Web site (and blog) for marketers just like you—a community that we call Customer Intelligence professionals.  I know what you’re thinking, but before we get to that, allow me to introduce myself to those of you who may not know me.  My name is Carl Doty, and I’m a Vice President and Research Director here at Forrester, leading a team of talented analysts who serve this role with forward-thinking and pragmatic research. Now, let’s get back to that original thought: What is customer intelligence?

Customer intelligence (CI) is mission critical to any successful business.  Not all businesses have it—but all businesses should. CI is a marketing function first and foremost, but it’s also very closely aligned with the IT department because technology plays such a crucial role in uncovering the very “intelligence” that you seek. To uncover this invaluable asset, you need to mine customer data from across a vast landscape of sources and use an increasingly complex array of marketing automation and analytics technologies to uncover those nuggets of gold—the customer intelligence. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to obtain a complete and accurate picture of your customers that ultimately serves to improve your organization’s performance, and drive the overall marketing strategy across channels and lines of business.

Now that I’ve defined CI, the next logical question is: Why are we doing this? The answer is simple. We’re changing the Direct Marketing role to Customer Intelligence because we listened to you—our clients—through surveys, interviews, and conversations at events like Forrester’s own Marketing Forum. In fact, you might say that the new CI role is the direct result of our own “customer intelligence” gathering.

So, this blog is for you—our clients, our peers, our community of customer intelligence professionals. You are data-driven, technology focused, and customer centric marketers fighting for your right to get and keep your seat at the corporate strategy table. You need a trusted advisor who can help you and that’s exactly what we aim to do with this blog and our published research. There’s already a wealth of great research waiting for you—here are just a few of our most recent and widely read examples: 

•  Creating A Multichannel View Of Your Customer
•  Defining An Enterprisewide Customer Contact Strategy
•  How To Choose A Listening Platform
•  US Web Analytics Forecast, 2008 To 2014
•  The Forrester Wave™: UK Database Marketing Service Providers, Q2 2009

If you want a peek at our upcoming research, I encourage you to look at the planned research section on the profiles for each of our Customer Intelligence analysts: Dave Frankland; Julie Katz; John Lovett; and Suresh Vittal.

In closing, let me remind you that this blog is a two-way street, so I welcome and encourage you to share your thoughts in the discussions that will follow.  We will strive to keep the content fresh, relevant, and valuable.

Thanks for checking in.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Comments

[Christina Tierney]

This is really great news. I'm looking forward to your contributions. I'm especially gratified to hear that you were "listening" to us and then hence the creation of your blog and fully embracing "customer intelligence" Thanks again...can't wait to read more :)

[Toby Bloomberg]

Carl - Looking forward to you and your team sharing what I call the "First Listening Post©" in customer insights. Will you be including some of the findings from the studies that you mention in your post?

[jascha kaykas-wolff]

Carl & Team,

Kudos. This evolution represents the state of the industry very well. We fully embrace this direction at Webtrends and look forward to participating as you grow this practice area at Forrester and within the customer and vendor community.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff
vp, marketing Webtrends
@kaykas

[Carl Doty]

Thanks for the kind words everyone! I'm glad that you like the direction. Stay tuned for a sneak peak at some findings from our most recent study on the state of CI professionals!

[Ed Gillespie]

Bravo! Look forward to the conversation!