Customer Insight. As companies become increasingly knowledgeable about their customers, the ability to facilitate their decisions, address their needs and ensure their success expands enormously. Truly customer-focused companies concentrate on building loyal customer relationships, generating growth by selling more products and services to their existing customers.

Customer intimacy is a key differentiator. Deep relationships enable companies to provide new and powerful levels of customer care. If they invest in existing relationships, they learn more about their customers – their preferences, priorities, challenges and opportunities – than any competitor can know. If they act on this knowledge, they can provide sophisticated customer solutions that no competitor can match.

Central to these efforts is the ability to manage customer relationships in powerful ways. Companies must build in-depth profiles that capture key information about their customers. This allows them to track opportunities and more actively influence demand. They must enable their front office professionals – in sales, service and other areas – to share this information in order to provide “one face” to the customer. They must be able to manage their customers effectively through multiple channels – through a sales force, call center, web site or a retail outlet. They also must be able to manage the relationships with their channel partners – be they resellers, distributors or retailers. These partners will have a vital link to the final customer; it’s critical to support their success in order to ensure one’s own.

Finally, it’s important to invest in building customer insight. This is the analysis that a company generates with regard to its customers, discovering which ones are most profitable and promising so that it can devote particular resources to them. By interacting with customers, one also gains a deeper understanding of their unmet demands and opportunities. As Don Peppers, co-author of the best-sellers The One to One Future and The One to One Enterprise, explains: “The only thing that prevents you from being reduced to a commodity is the insight you have into the actual needs of a customer – insight your competitor may not have and will not be able to act on.”