Generating rich customer insights – the centerpiece of successful marketing efforts – is more arduous and crucial in today’s digitally saturated world. Brands must not only understand their customers across all touch points, but analyze and glean patterns from their behavior, and quickly respond to the faintest signs of changing preferences and needs.

 Our multi-screen world creates even more complexity for the marketer. A recent Nielsen study revealed that the typical US consumer now owns four digital devices, and spends 60 hours a week consuming content across devices.

Plus, a majority of US households now own web-connected televisions, computers and smartphones. Amidst all these digital devices, consumers also have numerous choices for how and when they access and engage with that content as part of their customer journey.

Smoother customer journeys, not fragmented hops

Given the growing number of digital touch points where customers now interact with companies, marketing often can’t do what’s needed all on its own. Many brands typically think of customers (and the insights gleaned from them) as being “owned” by particular function – marketing owns brand management; service owns support; sales owns customer relationships; retail operations own the in-store experience, etc.

As a result, the customer data and corresponding insights are fragmented across these functions. When businesses can’t effectively combine customer insights across multiple digital channels, let alone across multiple customer-facing functions, marketers are less confident about their efforts.

This is why brands must have effective technologies and processes in place so they do not lose track when charting, designing and measuring the customer journey. Whether customers are browsing your brand website, completing a purchase on your mobile app or talking with a service representative via online chat, customers demand to be recognized and treated consistently no matter the channel.

Broader, deeper customer knowledge

To this end, SAS 360 Discover goes beyond channel-level data to collect detailed customer-level data for deeper customer understanding and better marketing decisions. SAS 360 Discover is part of the new SAS Customer Intelligence 360 suite that can help you create a new level of customer experience.

Now, you can go beyond page views and clicks to knowing why customers behave as they do on your digital properties, what are the characteristics of your most profitable customers and which digital interactions successfully resulted in loyal, profitable relationships?

In today’s marketing environment, brands gain a competitive edge if they stop perceiving customer engagement as a series of discrete interactions and instead see it as customers do: a set of interrelated interactions that, when combined, make up the customer experience.