The Marchex Blog

Conversation Intelligence: The Best First-Party Data

Collecting information about target markets is an essential part of any marketing strategy. Recovering insights into your consumer base’s background and preferences can inform a marketing team’s messaging tactics. Data is more valuable the closer it is to matching the profile of a marketer’s actual customers, so information taken from the customers themselves, or first-party data, is the most ideal option. Using conversation intelligence, marketers and sales staff can automatically collect first-party data from customers and prospects. 

What is First-Party Data?  

The three main types of customer data are differentiated by the degree of proximity to the point of collection. First-party data is information collected by a business directly from its customers. Second-party data is first-party data collected by a business and made available to another business for a secondary use to the extent permissible under privacy laws. Third-party data is information sold to and available from data brokers and similar businesses and typically used for targeted advertising and similar purposes. Most companies prefer to rely on first-party data in optimizing their operations because it comes directly from their own customers. Examples include website visit behavior, purchase history, and phone call outcomes. Much of first-party data is collected via software tools, the most detailed and effective of which are conversation intelligence platforms.   

Benefits of Conversation Intelligence 

Conversation intelligence is one of the better sources of first-party data because it reveals key details from offline exchanges like phone calls, which would otherwise be lost. Prospects tell salespeople exactly which needs must be met for a sale to occur during these interactions. The conversation intelligence platform can then aggregate the data across all tracked phone conversations, organize it, and make it available to revenue teams automatically. Key details from these unstructured conversations– such as customer intent and likelihood of purchase—are then neatly displayed for the sales and marketing teams to make more informed operational decisions.  

Introduce Your Team to Conversation Intelligence 

If you would like to learn more about gaining critical insight into your target market’s preferences directly from the source, schedule a consultation with us today. Marchex works with industry leaders to supply the tools to collect more relevant, timely and actionable consumer data.