Most customer service executives spend a considerable amount of time thinking about the need to change their contact center from a cost/service-oriented operation to one oriented toward profit/loyalty. A key capability in this migration will be the center's ability to act on customer intelligence.

Computer Sciences Corporation recently surveyed more than 750 Fortune 1000 executives regarding their customer intelligence (CI) efforts and found operationalizing customer insights to consistently be the weakest of the three CI capabilities (customer information integration, customer insights, and customer insight operationalization.):

* 69 percent of respondents have not yet made customer insights available to their customer facing personnel.

* 54 percent do not differentiate service to their "best" customers.

* 70 percent do not have defined business rules in place when customers present a supportable need outside traditional sales and service situations.