In-depth: What is Customer-facing analytics?

Customer-facing analytics refers to insights provided directly to customers about a service or product they are using. These insights rely on large-scale aggregate data and come in various forms, such as dashboards, APIs, reports, or data shares integrated into the product experience. They help customers make informed decisions and better understand their interactions with the product or service. Examples of customer-facing analytics include Stripe dashboard, Mux Data, Twilio Voice Insights, Spotify Wrapped, and Visier Embedded Analytics. Customer-facing analytics can be a form of real-time analytics, where these real-time insights are presented to end users. The use cases for customer-facing analytics include product usage, operational insights, observability, engagement metrics, and personalization. Strategies for delivering customer-facing analytics include in-product metrics, embedded analytics, analytics APIs, data sharing, self-service reporting portals, ML models, and AI agents. Companies invest heavily in customer-facing analytics to generate new revenue streams, reduce support load, boost user engagement, inform purchase decisions, and improve retention. The technical requirements for customer-facing analytics include a native product experience, sub-second latency and high concurrency, and sub-minute data freshness.