You could be forgiven for being overwhelmed by customer data. It's likely that some of those transactions and data involve your customers and your company. But it's a dizzying prospect to figure out how you can translate all that activity into implications for customer experience. In the old days of database marketing and customer segmentation, we practiced what might be called "artisanal analytics." The bulk of our activities involved generating queries and reports on what our customers had done in the past.

You could be forgiven for being overwhelmed by customer data. It's likely that some of those transactions and data involve your customers and your company. But it's a dizzying prospect to figure out how you can translate all that activity into implications for customer experience. In the old days of database marketing and customer segmentation, we practiced what might be called "artisanal analytics." The bulk of our activities involved generating queries and reports on what our customers had done in the past.