Showing posts with label market research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label market research. Show all posts

Monday, May 10, 2010

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.