Account-based intelligence has become one of the essential tools for the CS teams to upsell or cross-sell their products and services.
As a customer success manager, you are always looking for ways to maximize value for your company. One way to do that is by ensuring that your customers get their desired outcomes from your products and services in the best possible manner.
Account-based intelligence is an extremely popular method for extracting this critical information. It mixes different static and dynamic information points to get an overview of the target account.
With the help of account intelligence, you can easily get valuable information about the decision-maker in an organization and can target them to meet your organizational objectives.
Definition of account-based intelligence
Account-based intelligence is data that measures customer behavior in real-time to offer insights that will help devise strategies accordingly. Account intelligence is insights based on customer information – purchases, orders, interactions, and more. It offers intelligence into what customers might buy based on dynamic and static data that keeps getting updated. Account-based intelligence insights will help you tailor product needs for your account.
The main types of data that form account-based intelligence include-
- Firmographic data- Information about the firm or company
- Technographic data- Information about what technology the firm is using
- Contextual data- This information is mostly digital information
- Behavioral data- Information about account behavior which is extremely dynamic
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A practical example of utilizing account-based intelligence
Account-based intelligence can be used in many ways. One of the ways is by helping optimize marketing campaigns. ABI can help improve their output and efficiency. You can derive important information from emails such as name, address, current position, and more. This can be used to send them sales pitches that work.
It is not possible to manually scan and get the information. However, if there is an account intelligence tool account managers can get the information. This makes the process scalable and helps grow the business. SmartKarrot’s account intelligence feature lets you perform a ton of actions that can help save account manager’s time and money. The key categories include-
- Core KPIs, trends, and metrics of customer accounts are observed, tracked, and recorded
- The product usage information that deals with customer knowledge or technical know-how are dealt with
- Customer health score to know which customers are happy and why; which customers are not happy and why
- Product adoption to see how customers have understood the product and how they use it
- Company or user behavior to see if companies have undergone any major changes and why
These features of SmartKarrot’s account intelligence make it helpful in ensuring information is obtained in the right manner and used for the right outcomes.
6 ways to manage account intelligence
Managing account intelligence is important to get the right results. Here are six ways to manage account intelligence.
Keep the data updated and avoid outdated data
Account intelligence can be managed if the account information is up to date. If customer information is obsolete, you will not get the right insights. This can create a negative impact on the results of the account intelligence tool.
If your information is right and precise, you will get the latest insights and information. Avoiding outdated information can go a long way in improving communication, personalizing offers, and ensuring customers have a social connection.
Improvise on email campaigns/customer journey data
Managing account intelligence is necessary to improvise email campaigns. You can send tailored communication, understand customers better, and narrow down results for a better end product. Account intelligence helps manage customer journeys and simplifies how data is looked at.
You can improve customer targeting, send specific information, and improve customer outcomes. For example- If you know that customers are in a specific geographic location, you can target your messaging based on that. A little local flavor never hurts anyone, right.
Use predictive data in tracking customer movements
Account intelligence also enables you to use data to track customer movements. Predictive analytics are extremely important to understand customers better. Predictive analytics helps retain and target customers by creating a personalized experience. Account intelligence can help create a targeted experience for customers and track their journey in a better manner.
Ascertain customers at risk
Account intelligence helps you ascertain customers at risk. You can know which accounts are likely to churn and why. When you know a customer is not happy, they will most likely churn. It can be anything causing the churn from bad customer service, lack of product knowledge, or sheer misunderstanding of the tool. So you can pick the red customers and help them with the product.
Search for opportunities like upsell or cross-sale
Account intelligence helps you spot opportunities for growth. It can be upselling in one account and cross-selling in another. This means you understand which accounts are likely to be retained. Account intelligence helps you know what products can work as allies to the existing ones purchased.
Account-based intelligence also helps you get all the information in a single place. You know that no information is spilled through cracks, and there is adequate transparency. You can filter information to get all you need in one frame. This can be helpful in making decisions for the marketing strategy.
Conclusion
Account-based intelligence is a goldmine as far as the information about potential decision-makers is concerned. Account intelligence is required to reduce missing information gaps and increase awareness of overall company affairs.
You can know which account is not happy and which account is happy. You see accounts at risk, those that have the potential to grow, and leverage that.
You can easily manage stubborn accounts, ensure you get alerted in case of bad reports, track user behavior, and keep the customer in a simple fashion.
The onus is now on you to manage it effectively using the different ways we have mentioned above.
Dattatraya Shetty is an IT Professional with 2 Decades of experience in areas of Product Development, Implementation & Service Delivery Management. As the Head of Implementations and SOC Compliance in Smartkarrot he is on a mission to provide relishing customer experience.
Published December 08, 2021, Updated March 02, 2023