The role of customer insight in driving customer satisfaction and loyalty

Abstract

This study explores the extent to which firms generate customer insight and the processes that are performed to transform market information into actionable insights. This study also investigates whether customer insight drives company decisions, and how managers make use of such knowledge to create customer value. Finally, this study sets out to determine whether customer insight positively results in increased customer loyalty and satisfaction. Evidence was gathered by means of one-to-one interviews that were conducted with ten professionals from leading organisations within the telecoms industry. The interviews provided in-depth qualitative information, which was then analysed using NVivo™ Software, enabling the emerging themes to be observed. Analysis of participants’ responses provides evidence on the nature of customer insight use. The results show that firms follow a customer insight framework to generate market and customer related knowledge, and conduct a transformation process to obtain market intelligence. Managers provide several motives for the use of insight, which include the benefit of the firms and their customers. Nevertheless, evidence also indicates that organisations experience resource and management restrictions which hinder the generation and correct use of customer insight. Analysis of the results also shows that even though insight may result in increases in perceived customer value, managers find difficulty in correlating customer insight with customer satisfaction and loyalty. Two limitations must be considered. Firstly, this study took place in an highly competitive market, and therefore companies were limited in how much they could reveal about their processes. The strategic use of customer insight within firms was therefore only briefly explored. Secondly, this study did not effectively measure the use of insight by groups within organisations, and focused solely on the motives for managers’ use of customer insight. This study provides an initial assessment on the use of customer insight amongst local firms. Further research must be carried out and applied to a wider range of industries and companies with mixed cultural backgrounds. By consulting this study, marketing practitioners may learn the importance of gathering customer insight and the benefits that it brings to organisations and their stakeholders.