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The better you know your customers, the more you can deliver on their needs. The more you deliver on your customers' needs, the more they'll return to you for repeat sales in the future.

This is the intent behind customer intelligence platforms: Helping to narrow the gap between what your customers want and what you're able to provide them in order to increase customer retention.

In this article, I've compiled the ultimate list of the best customer intelligence platforms. These tools will optimize your customer experience, resulting in happier customers who will champion your brand to their friends, family, and coworkers. 

What is a Customer Intelligence Platform?

A customer intelligence platform collects customer data from a variety of relevant data sources, unifies them at one place, and ultimately uses AI and machine learning to get actionable insights on customer behavior, opinions, and attitudes. It specifically involves identifying your audience across channels at each touchpoint, understanding their behavior, and using that data to launch timely marketing campaigns that are relevant to their behavior and needs.

Marketers can use this data to build audiences and launch highly personalized customer journeys based on real-time data concerning consumer needs, wants, pain points, and preferences. You also can leverage this information to launch the right customer-centric, data-driven offers at the right time.

Overviews Of The 27 Best Customer Intelligence Platforms

Here’s a brief description of each of the best customer intelligence platforms on my list showing what each does best, plus screenshots to showcase some of the features.

1

SAS Customer Intelligence 360

Best for enterprises

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.5
2 reviews

Free trial available

Pricing upon request

SAS is an analytics powerhouse with over 40 years of experience in the field of embedded customer analytics and multi-channel marketing intelligence. They are experts in marketing planning and customer journey activation. They currently have customers in over 147 countries and are installed at more than 83,000 business, government, and university sites worldwide.

Features I love include the system’s ability to create an OLAP cube (a data structure in SQL Server Analysis Services) for uber-fast processing of large amounts of data for smart, fast insights. You may need a dedicated IT or dev team to take full advantage of this, which is why I recommend the tool for larger enterprise business users.

SAS has an open API and claims to integrate with your existing tech. However, it does not list specific integrations on its site.Customer support is available via email, phone, and an extensive knowledge base.

SAS doesn’t list pricing on their website, but sources indicate their service can cost from $8,700/year.

They offer a free demo.

2

Funnel

Best for ecommerce companies

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.5
112 reviews

Free trial available

$399/month/account

Funnel.io curates data from all your top sources like Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Facebook Ads, and Google Ads. It systemizes it using data connectors (freedom from CSV files!) to create valuable customer insights. In other words, Funnel.io helps in centralizing data from multiple sources into one place, with fresh data being pulled from all these sources several times a day. This way, you have the most up-to-date data always at your fingertips, helping you make accurate marketing decisions.

Funnel.io also helps in visualizing your spending data alongside your revenue data, so you can derive key insights on your campaign performance. You can add or remove platforms without breaking your data model and send the data to any connected tool. It also stores raw historical data so you can access and extract insights without starting from scratch. Ultimately you do not have to manually transform the data into insights.

Funnel.io helps you in cleaning, mapping, and swinging it all together in one place. This unifying of data at one place plus an added feature of currency conversion makes it the right fit for ecommerce businesses.

Funnel.io integrates with over 500+ marketing data platforms like Google Analytics, Salesforce, Stripe, MailChimp, Facebook, and other similar apps.

The pricing starts with the essential plan, billed at $399 per month.

You can also request a free demo.

3

ZyloTech

Best for B2B customer intelligence

Free Demo

Zylotech is a comparatively newer player in the game but has fast proven its excellence in the field of customer intelligence. It was founded in 2014 and has headquarters in Boston. They have some of the biggest names in the tech space as clients, like Google, Cisco, and Palo Alto Networks.

Zylotech is a specialist in providing customer contact intelligence to customer operations teams. They have features in data governance, account-based marketing enablement (to focus on decision-makers in target accounts that matter most), and AI-driven predictive analytics. It combines trusted data governance with your ideal customer profile (ICP) and then uses AI-driven predictive data analytics based on customer behavior to yield the best-prioritized leads.

Using this combination of features, you will know who to target and when, and also how to target them in a more personalized way.A Stand out feature is its AI-driven predictive analytics that lets you understand the behavior patterns in your contacts list. Based on that, you can identify and select the next best action for a streamlined experience.Taking the right action helps in better customer engagement, more cross-sell/upsell opportunities, and a highly optimized sales pipeline.

Zylotech also gives you the ability to measure these results. Zylotech does not list any integrations on its site.

Zylotech does not list pricing on their site and offers custom pricing available upon request.

You can also request a demo.

4

Dataforce

Best for competitive intelligence

Pricing Upon Request

Dataforce lets you get the latest juicy intel on your competitors. I am talking about data like new product introductions, product renewal cycles, pricing, social media data, and key customer wins. It collects data of your competitors from thousands of web sources and gives you real-time alerts of updates and changes. You can use this data to identify sales opportunities and win them with the right messaging that is refined with the knowledge of your competitor’s approach.

You can combine this data with Dataforce’s prospecting features such as predictive sales alerts and buyer signals. This helps you in identifying the right sales opportunities at the right time.

Dataforce works with your existing CRMs like HubSpot, Marketo, and Salesforce.

Dataforce does not list pricing on its website, and it is available upon request.

Currently, they do not offer a free trial or demo.

5

ActionIQ

Best customer value calculation software

Free Demo

Action IQ helps in giving you a 360-degree view of user activity, pushing multi-channel customer behavioral data into your CRM. This helps you in delivering more personalized experiences and engagement to your customers.The feature I like about ActionIQ is its ability to deliver personalized offer timing and segmented offer types to customers based on the calculation of customer value and likelihood to churn.

This way, you can identify at-risk customers and deploy hyper-personalized retention campaigns across email and paid media, thus reducing churn.You can also calculate your audience affinity to specific products and launch targeted campaigns based on their preferences. This ultimately leads to higher conversion rates and more revenue for your business as you are delivering offers the audience is interested in.

ActionIQ integrates with customer data and audience management tools like Adobe Analytics, Facebook Ads, Optimizely, Salesforce, Shopify, and other similar apps.

ActionIQ does not list pricing on its site but gives customized pricing available upon request.

You can also request a free demo.

6

Zeotap

Best identity resolution software

Free Demo

Pricing Upon Request

With Zeotap, you can onboard your company’s 1st party CRM data with high match rates to uncover customer insights. Zeotap features include customer data unification by merging offline CRM data with online worlds (digital IDs). This helps in customer profiling and an advanced level of segmentation leading to more targeted campaigns.

Zeotap’s privacy-first CDP allows you to customize user journeys while keeping consent as a priority (save yourself from the GDPR police!). Its AI-based predictive analytics use machine learning to proactively help customers make decisions (thus building powerful customer relationships!) and give them an optimized experience, leading them towards a sale.

Zeotap works out of the box with Google Marketing Platform, Salesforce, Adobe, Facebook, and other similar apps where your customer data is stored.

Zeotap does not list pricing but offers a custom quote based on request.

You can also request a free demo.

7

YouGov

Best self-service research tool

Pricing Upon Request

With YouGov, you have a proprietary panel of 15 million people worldwide in 50+ markets. You can leverage and survey this panel to generate thousands of accurate data points on consumer behavior, opinions, and attitudes. You can use this information to shape your market strategies that are up to speed with your current market demands and conditions.A special feature I like about YouGov is its ability to connect the research data and deliver meaningful insights based on 250k variables.

The YouGov profile feature helps you in building rich personas from these variables using the responses of YouGov panelists.You can create depth and detail by accurately linking consumer tastes, perceptions, and habits. You can choose from thousands of variables refreshed every week including brand usage, social media consumption, hobbies, and interests.

Your data sets are stored in a cloud-based data store and updated weekly.With its audience profiling feature, you can reach respondents that reflect your target audience and segments across demographics and attitudes. There is also an ability to get rapid insights with live access to real consumer opinions and the latest industry trends within minutes of you launching your survey.

You can use this to trial and test new product concepts and creatives, getting a real-world opinion rapidly.

Pricing is available upon request. Currently, there is no option for a free demo.

8

Coglide

Best for buyer persona management

Free Trial

From $99 per month for 5000 contacts

Coglide helps marketers in building and managing buyer personas in automation so you can run high-performing campaigns. You can connect Coglide with all your apps and sync data to create a 360-degree profile of your customers. The feature I love in this one is how it maps and matches your contacts to buyer personas in automation by using dynamic persona mapping, a process that quickly identifies who your customer is and where they are in the customer journey.

This helps in determining the optimal level of touchpoints for more conversions in the sales funnel. You can use their visual analytics to understand your customer behavior and thus improve customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. You can create super-targeted lists and segment them to boost your campaigns. Their AI recommendation engine helps you understand campaign insights and discover hidden opportunities.

Coglide works out of the box with apps like HubSpot, GSuite, Salesforce, and other similar apps.

Coglide pricing starts from $99 per month for 5000 contacts with an option for a free trial.

9

Amperity AmpIQ

Best audience segmentation software

Free Demo

Pricing Upon Request

With Amperity, you can pull various customer segments and study their predictive customer lifetime value, customer lifecycle, sensitivity to discounts and offers, and affinity to specific products. This way, you can launch specific targeted campaigns that appeal to various audience segments. All the messy data from a variety of sources are unified in clean tables for your marketing and reporting needs.What I especially like about Amperity (and so do a lot of its customers) is its ability to segment high-value tiers.

Basically, you can double-click into analysis and add the context of your high-value tiers. This helps in understanding your high-value tier customer and their behavior to every marketing action you commit. For example, you can measure whether your high-value tier customers were among the first to shop when you started a new seasonal offer. This helps in constantly measuring your engagement and conversion levels specific to high-value tiers or, in general, to any customer type of your choice.

Another special feature is Amperity’s stitch that uses AI to deliver human-level intuition at scale. It helps in finding the hidden connections across all your customer records, be it in point of sale, eCommerce, email, loyalty, mobile or more. This ultimately gives you the ability to build rich customer profiles.

Amperity works seamlessly with all the major marketing, analytics, customer service, and data management systems. It directly integrates with apps like Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Amazon Kinesis, Asana, AWS Cloud Trail, and similar software.Customer support is available via phone, email, and a ticketing system.

Amperity does not list its pricing, and it is available upon a custom request.

You can request a free demo.

10

Alida Sparq

Best for integrations

Pricing Upon Request

Alida helps in creating deep customer insights through using progressive profiling where your database is continuously updated with insights about customer preferences, priorities, and buyer behavior.

Alida Sparq operates with a relationship-based approach where it uses every customer interaction touchpoint to segment and profile the customer. Here customer truths like motivations, preferences, and beliefs are translated into actionable data that help customers make decisions, optimizing the customer journey for sales, and de-risking decision making.

Alida has a huge list of integrations. It integrates out of the box with Adobe Experience Cloud, Salesforce, Marketo, Zendesk, SAP CRM, Tableau, Marketo, Facebook, Twitter, Hubspot, Kronos, Amazon, Campaign Monitor, Qualtrics, Squarespace, Shopify, Zoho CRM, and dozens more.

Alida offers customized pricing based upon request.

You can also book a free demo.

Need Expert Help Selecting The Right Customer Experience Software?

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The Best Customer Intelligence Platforms Summary Table

Tool Trial Info Price
1

Free trial available

Pricing upon request Website
2
Funnel

Best for ecommerce companies

Free trial available

$399/month/account Website
3
ZyloTech

Best for B2B customer intelligence

Free Demo

Website
4
Dataforce

Best for competitive intelligence

Not available

Pricing Upon Request Website
5
ActionIQ

Best customer value calculation software

Free Demo

Website
6
Zeotap

Best identity resolution software

Free Demo

Pricing Upon Request Website
7
YouGov

Best self-service research tool

Not available

Pricing Upon Request Website
8
Coglide

Best for buyer persona management

Free Trial

From $99 per month for 5000 contacts Website
9
Amperity AmpIQ

Best audience segmentation software

Free Demo

Pricing Upon Request Website
10
Alida Sparq

Best for integrations

Not available

Pricing Upon Request Website

Other Customer Intelligence Platform Options

Here’s a few more that didn’t make the top list.

  1. ActiveCampaign

    Best for internet marketers

  2. Know Your Customer

    Best digital KYC compliance software

  3. Customer Happiness Index

    Best predictive analytics software

  4. Plumb5

    Best for auto-segmentation

  5. FullStory

    Best for consent management

  6. Glassbeam

    Best for healthcare companies

  7. Gong.io

    Best customer intelligence platform for revenue intelligence

  8. LiftIQ

    Best for Salesforce users

  9. Adtelligence Customer Intelligence

    Best business intelligence platform for financial institutions

  10. Oracle Unity Customer Data Platform

    Best for unified customer profile

  11. Customer Thermometer

    Best for survey creation

  12. Leadspace

    Best for SaaS companies

  13. Arbit

    Best for customer interviews

  14. PriceSpider

    Best for customer journey visualization

  15. Clootrack

    Best for B2C companies

  16. Upland Localytics

    Best mobile app analytics software

  17. Auryc

    Best session replay software

How I Selected the Best Customer Intelligence Platforms

If you're wondering how I selected the best customer intelligence software, here's where I'll break it all down for you. First of all, I started with customer intelligence platforms that have high user review and satisfaction ratings. Then, using my experience in customer experience, I discerned what key criteria were most important for a customer intelligence platform and compared how each insights platform stacked up against the rest.

I empathize with how much time it takes to source the right software for a job. I do this work so that you don't have to. I've been using and reviewing customer intelligence platforms for years so you can trust me to do the heavy lifting and compile all the facts you need to make your final decision.

If you have more general questions about customer intelligence strategy, you can skip to our FAQ at the bottom of the page.

Selection Criteria

After careful consideration, I've determined that these are the most important criteria when selecting the best customer intelligence platform. Here's a brief list outlining the whats and whys of my selection. 

User Interface (UI):

The user interface is crucial when selecting a customer intelligence platform because it affects the efficiency and effectiveness of data collection, analysis, and decision-making. Moreover, an intuitive interface can reduce the learning curve and encourage adoption by non-technical staff, leading to broader utilization of customer intelligence throughout the organization.

Usability:

A user-friendly platform can increase efficiency, accuracy, adoption, and customization, leading to better customer insights and experiences. It can save time, reduce errors, encourage adoption by non-technical staff, and allow for tailoring to specific needs. Therefore, it is essential to consider usability when selecting a customer intelligence platform.

Integrations:

Is it easy to connect with other tools? Any pre-built integrations? The best customer intelligence platforms work out of the box with a vast variety of applications that deal with customer data like marketing analysis tools, customer service tools, database management systems, beta test management software, and other similar apps.

Pricing:

Pricing is an important consideration when selecting a customer intelligence platform because it directly affects the costs of accessing and utilizing customer intelligence. The pricing model can vary significantly between platforms, and it is important to consider the features included in each pricing tier, as well as any additional costs or fees.

People Also Ask

Here are a few additional questions—answered—to help you find your way.

What Other CI Tools Do I Need?

The following customer intelligence tools lists can complement your CI strategy.

If you're looking for customer intelligence solutions, you might also like:

What Do You Think About These Customer Intelligence Platforms?

Companies that lead in customer experience management outperform those that lag by over 80%. Moreover, avoidable churn costs companies up to $35.3 billion in lost revenue, making customer intelligence platforms an appealing option for growth-focused organizations.

The tools on this list are my top selections for the best customer intelligence platforms. If you liked this list, I would really appreciate it if you could hit the share button and share it with your network on your social media channels. Who knows who you might be helping with this tool list!

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