Just last weekend, I was considering buying a new camera lens. I already had a few brands in mind, so I looked online at their websites to learn more about their product information. I was able to conduct a comparison on different brands and lenses to narrow down to a specific 50mm lens provided by a major brand. I added the lens to my cart online, but wanted to get a closer look of it, so I chatted online with a representative to see if there were any lenses available at stores near me. This digital channel was my first point of interaction with the brand, but what impact did that have on my buying experience? Would responsive design come into play? Would the brand proactively contact me about similar products? Or would they simply react to inquiries that I had as a consumer? But today’s consumers expect immediate, individualized messages – would this brand deliver?

The fact of the matter is that a lot of brands don’t have the capabilities to modify messages, offers and interactions across channels, devices and points in time so that they are more relevant to the end consumer.

 Enter SAS

SAS Customer Intelligence 360, launching this month to the marketplace, offers an all-encompassing view of customers no matter how they choose to engage with you across digital properties.

A complete customer view

SAS Customer Intelligence 360 can give you detailed insights from digital channels customers interact with to create the most effective and relevant actions. The solution rapidly transforms digital data into a complete 360-degree view of the customer, meeting each customer’s needs at the right time, place and in proper context. Multiple decision-making methods, such as predictive models and multivariate tests, help ensure that customers gets the most relevant and personalized offers.

Data integration

Data is also easy to integrate with many offline customer channels though SAS Customer Intelligence 360 and its customer decision hub. Customer interactions are based on previous engagements on all other platforms. The data hub is able to convert all of this into customer-focused actions. With this data integration, the brand is able to gather my interactions and information from all available sources; not just the website, but the call center, mobile apps, social media and point of sale.

Offline customer data can be appended to digital data to further augment the view of me as a customer. These data sources, typically demographic or transactional in nature, gives marketers valuable insight into a customer’s true needs in order to create more relevant offers, better targeted activities and more efficient use of marketing resources. This capability allows the brand to see me more than just page clicks. They’ll see me as a father with young children, interested in photography and seeking to buy a 50mm lens to capture fleeting family moments.

Insights into future actions

You don’t need to be a data scientist to harness the power of predictive marketing; SAS Customer Intelligence 360 includes guided analytics to provide marketers a forward-looking view of customer journeys. This enables them to better understand business drivers and incorporate them into segmentation, optimization and other analytic techniques. Marketers can better forecast how customers will perform in the future. The solution acts as the data scientist – enabling marketers to become more efficient and effective in the analytical techniques they embed into marketing initiatives.

Web data collection

Each web page is embedded with a single line of HTML that automatically collects page information without expensive tagging. With this feature, the webpage configuration might change simultaneously with what I click on, the order and timing of my clicks, each keystroke, etc. Dynamic data collection offers me more relevant content as I navigate through the brand’s site. Any customer activities are recorded privately and securely over time so that once a customer is identified, the information is connected automatically.

Simply put, SAS Customer Intelligence 360 offers marketers the confidence to manage their digital customer journeys in a more personalized and profitable way. Marketers gain a complete view of their customers and transform this data using analytical insight into customer-centric knowledge and future actions. With this solution, brands can interact with customers on a personalized level and customers will be more satisfied with their entire relationship with a brand, not just a single transaction. Customer loyalty goes up and attrition goes down.

And as for me, I got the lens I was looking for, and was satisfied with the customer experience. Of course I have ideas on how to improve it on behalf of this brand, and SAS Customer Intelligence 360 fits into that picture.