22. March 2021
The decisive knowledge advantage in the development of a customer-oriented and distinctive product and service portfolio is enjoyed by companies that know what their customers think, what they want, and how they perceive the products and services offered. Deriving profitable insights – customer insights – from this heterogeneous information presents companies with challenges: Which sources and methods provide the most or best information about the customer? How are recommendations for action derived from the knowledge gained and fed back into the organization, product and service development or other relevant business areas? The consortium of AGCO, Hilti, Miele, P3, Fresenius Medical Care and Groupe PSA addressed these and other questions around customer insights in our consortium benchmarking. The goal of the project was to identify successful practice companies that successfully collect and apply customer insights in their company.

Identification of best practice approaches through a European benchmarking study

As part of a benchmarking study in which more than 120 companies from various industries participated, best practices in the relevant fields of action of customer insights management were identified. These fields were: Strategy development, selection of suitable sources, analysis and evaluation of data, feedback into business processes and organization design. The consortium gained exclusive insights into a total of 16 success factors along the customer insights framework, which was developed at the beginning of the project, through the study results and numerous practical examples from top performers in benchmarking. Subsequently, the most innovative companies from their point of view were selected from anonymized case studies of the top performers in order to get to know their approaches better in company visits.

Award for Successful Practice Companies

The companies Wacker Neuson, Audi, E.ON, Linde Material Handling as well as Vorwerk International in cooperation with Westphalia Datalab were chosen. During the virtual company visits, the companies provided deep insights into their customer insights management and inspired the consortium partners with concrete examples and projects. Among other things, they spotlighted how data from networked machines is used to understand customer product usage. The consortium also learned about direct methods of customer involvement in product and service development, for example through fixed bodies such as panels or councils. In-house conferences and powerful insights platforms offer the opportunity to share knowledge about the customer within the company for all employees to use. Another example demonstrated how advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence methods assist in service ticket classification and root cause analysis for complaints.
All visited companies convinced the consortium and were awarded as Successful Practice companies during the closing event. We congratulate the awarded companies and thank them for the deep insights into their Customer Insights Management.

Initiation of an Expert Circle

Since customer insights represent a strategic field of development for all consortium partners and Successful Practice companies in the coming years, the Center Smart Services will initiate an Expert Circle Customer Insights. The goal is to strengthen the regular exchange and the network in the community.
Take the opportunity and join us and our consortium now!