Leveraging one's captive customer database for insights

In the course of building a business, one typically creates a database of customers and prospects. If one agrees that insights are not just important but also critical for creating winning business strategies, then the captive database that a company has nurtured over a period of time is a veritable source of customer insights. 

That said, it is not unusual to find companies - in both consumer and B2B space - not striving to leverage this source for insights. 

Let's take the example of a Bank. In my family, we have relationships with 6 Banks in all - ranging from a relationship of 2 years to over 25 years. This list has 3 foreign Banks, 1 Indian private Bank and 2 Indian public Banks. So far, we have not received a single invitation from any of the Banks to provide them inputs on any facet of their service. To be fair, one Bank does throw up a survey link on its website but none of the other Banks have even tried to engage with any of us in my family. 

A few years back when I wanted to let my apartment out for rent, I used a couple of property sites (registration is compulsory on these sites and therefore, one ends up giving one's email and phone number). And I did succeed in finding a tenant through one of them. Am I not a prime prospect for a feedback? While I get emails and calls from both the sites to renew my paid subscription, neither has actually asked me about their service either through mail or by phone. Surprises me!

While the value of researching the customer set outside of one's customer database cannot be disputed, insights from one's own database can be an important additional input into marketing decisions. 

Customer insight generation is an important facet of Brand marketing. Isn't it therefore foxing that a gold mine is being ignored? There could be many reasons for companies to not mine one's captive database for insights. However, businesses should think seriously think about using this route to insights for there are some clear benefits. 

Your best users are your finest critics

When you are introducing a new feature or a new product related to your existing product, the people who can give you the most insightful feedback are your best users. Subconsciously, they have built a bond with your brand and therefore, would not hesitate giving a honest feedback based on their current experience.  

There's nothing to beat a 2-way communication with your customers

The customer database provides an opportunity for the company to engage with its base regularly. While spamming is an issue, no customer would resent meaningful communication efforts from the company with which he / she has a relationship. 

Engagement with one's captive database helps micro-targeting

Our experience has been that research with a captive database almost always throws up a 'break-out' trend in a unique segment and has resulted in a highly prioritised action item. A company found after its employee satisfaction survey that people with more than 5 years of experience in Department 'C' had much lower satisfaction scores and much higher scores in 'not likely to recommend a friend for a job in the company'. Troubling as the finding might have been, a clear action plan emerged to resolve what could have been a serious attrition issue of senior people. 

Engaging with a captive database (especially online) saves money and saves time

We recently concluded two online surveys. One was in the recruitment space - to understand the possible motivations for engineers in the automotive sector to look for a new job. The project took 11 days to complete and costed our client 25% of what it might have costed through traditional methods. The second was in the Telecom space - to gauge the influence of mobile number portability on the loyalty of consumers. This project delivered a large sample size, took 21 days to complete from start to finish (traditional field research would have taken more than 2 months to deliver this sample size) and costed our client 20% of normal.         

The question often asked is how reliable is the research data coming from a database survey. If one's conducting an online survey, it is important to know that brand consumers who are not online are not represented by the survey. If a brand has its significant segments of consumers / customers online, there's no reason why a brand should worry about effective representation. For example, if one is targeting the young urban populace in the age group of 18 to 24 years, it is fair to assume that this demographic set would be online. Once the survey is concluded among the captive database of prospects / customers of the brand, a cross-tab of the results for the targeted age-group would yield a fair outcome for the brand's decision-makers. The advantage is in the numbers - with online survey targeting a captive database, one can aim for a higher sample size and thus reduce the margin of error.     

When companies start planning to use their database for insight generation, while most of the simple surveys can be done in-house, it would be wise to use professional help when it comes to a project with scale and complexities and if you are faced with severe lack of bandwidth.

It is highly recommended that companies evaluate this source (captive database) for key business insights. After all, marketing decisions have to be made and insights help in making them easier!