Customer Insights Manager Salary [+ Resources to Advance]

Understanding the salary landscape for customer insights managers is crucial whether you’re entering the field or looking to advance your career.

In this guide, we’ll provide an overview of typical customer insights manager salaries, explore factors that can influence earnings, and share valuable resources to help you progress in your career.

Let’s get started!

TL;DR

• A customer insights manager is a professional responsible for analyzing and interpreting data related to customer behavior, preferences, and feedback to inform strategic business decisions.
• According to Glassdoor, the estimated annual pay for a customer insights manager is $151,102/year, with an average salary of $107,520/year. But there are other additional payments, including bonuses, commissions, and profit sharing that can increase the salary by $43,582/year.
• Education and experience alone may not make you the best customer insights manager. You need something more. Here are some ideas on how to make your journey easier and more meaningful:
  • Leverage advanced analytics tools: Tools like SQL, Userpilot, and Power BI can help uncover deep insights and visualize data in a comprehensible manner.
  • Stay customer-centric: Understanding and empathizing with customer needs, preferences, and pain points is crucial for deriving actionable insights that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Foster cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with marketing, sales, product, and other departments to ensure insights are effectively integrated into strategic decisions.
  • Continuous learning and development: Engage in professional development opportunities, attend industry conferences, and pursue relevant certifications to keep your skills sharp and maintain a competitive edge.
  • Communicate insights effectively: Tailor your communication style to the audience, whether it’s through detailed reports, custom analytics dashboards, or executive summaries, to ensure the insights are understood and actionable.
• Leveraging the right tools for customer insights can significantly enhance your ability to gather, analyze, and act on customer data. Here are some essential tools:
  • Best tool for feedback collection and product analytics – Userpilot: A no-code tool, Userpilot lets customer insight managers trigger in-app surveys, conduct funnel and path reports, and visualize data on custom dashboards that are easily sharable with stakeholders.
  • Best tool for project management – Jira: Jira is an excellent project management tool designed for agile teams. With robust features for sprint planning, user behavior tracking, and reporting, Jira ensures your customer insights projects stay organized and on track.
  • Best tool for team collaboration – Monday: Monday.com is a versatile project management and team collaboration platform. It offers customizable workflows, customer journey visualization, and seamless integration with other tools.
  • Best tool for customer support – Zendesk: Zendesk is a leading customer support platform that provides comprehensive solutions for managing customer inquiries and support tickets. Its robust analytics and reporting features help you track customer issues, measure response times, and improve overall customer satisfaction.
  • Best tool for customer relationship management – Zoho Desk:  Zoho Desk is one of the best solutions designed to streamline customer support operations. It offers multi-channel support, automation features, and detailed analytics, making it easier to understand customer behavior and deliver personalized support.
  • Best tool for inbound marketing and sales – HubSpot: HubSpot offers a suite of tools for marketing, sales, and customer service. Its customer insights capabilities include detailed analytics, lead tracking, and customer feedback management, helping you align your strategies with customer needs.
  • Best tool for customer engagement – Custify: Custify is one of the best customer success tools that emphasizes customer engagement and retention. It offers automated workflows, health scores, and detailed analytics, enabling you to monitor customer satisfaction and intervene proactively to prevent churn.
• Looking into tools for customer insights managers? Userpilot is an all-in-one product platform with engagement features and powerful analytics capabilities. Book a demo to see it in action!

What is a customer insights manager?

A customer insights manager is a professional responsible for analyzing and interpreting data related to customer behavior, preferences, and feedback to inform strategic business decisions.

They use different tools to gather insights from various data sources, such as user interactions, support tickets, and customer surveys.

Customer insights manager’s main responsibilities

A customer insights manager plays a crucial role in understanding customers and driving strategic decisions based on their findings.

Their main responsibilities include:

• Data collection and analysis: Gather and analyze data from various sources, including user interactions, surveys, and support tickets, and utilize analytics tools to track product usage and customer behavior.
• Customer feedback management: Collect, analyze, and report on customer feedback to identify trends and areas for improvement and conduct qualitative research such as interviews and focus groups to gain deeper insights.
• Market and competitive analysis: Perform market research to understand industry trends and competitor strategies to develop benchmarks for product performance based on market data.
• Reporting and communication: Create detailed reports and analytics dashboards to present insights to stakeholders.
• Strategy development and implementation: Work with product teams to integrate customer insights into the product development lifecycle.
• Customer retention and satisfaction: Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of implemented strategies on customer satisfaction and product success.

How much does a customer insights manager make?

According to Glassdoor, the estimated annual pay for a customer insights manager is $151,102/year, with an average salary of $107,520/year. But there are other additional payments, including bonuses, commissions, and profit sharing that can increase the salary by $43,582/year.

Aside from the general salary estimation, here’s how experience can impact salary on average:

• Customer Insight Manager – $134,432/year
• Senior Customer Insights Manager – $175,176/year
• Top Customer Insights Executive – $243,861/year

The company where you work to improve customer satisfaction will also impact the total salary. Here are some of the top-paying companies with their average salaries:

• Amazon – $214,966/year
• BabyCenter – $138,337/year
• Wells Fargo – $148,687/year
• Reynolds American – $133,537/year

Your location will also determine how much you earn. Here are the average salaries for customer insights managers in major US cities:

• San Francisco – $134,117/year
• Seattle – $125,622/year
• San Jose – $129,376/year
• Oakland – $126,588/year

Customer insights manager career path

Are you looking to pursue your career as a customer insights manager? Here is how your career path will appear and how you can progress:

Entry-level analyst/associate

Starting your career as an entry-level analyst or associate provides foundational experience in data analysis, market research, and consumer behavior. In this role, you’ll support senior team members in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting customer data to derive actionable insights.

Junior customer insights manager

Moving to this role entails taking on more responsibility in conducting data analysis, developing reports, and assisting in the formulation of strategic recommendations. As you progress, focus on refining your data visualization skills and actively participating in client engagements.

Senior customer insights manager

Elevating to this role signifies a deeper level of expertise in leveraging customer data to drive business decisions and strategy. In this role, you’ll oversee a team of analysts, lead complex projects, and collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to deliver insights that inform organizational objectives.

Director of customer insights and beyond

At this level, you’ll be responsible for setting the strategic direction for the customer insights function, driving organizational alignment, and championing a culture of data-driven analytics for decision-making.

Best practices to be a great customer insights manager

Education and experience alone may not make you the best customer insights manager. You need something more. Here are some ideas on how to make your journey easier and more meaningful:

• Leverage advanced analytics tools: Tools like SQL, Userpilot, and Power BI can help uncover deep insights and visualize data in a comprehensible manner.
• Stay customer-centric: Understanding and empathizing with customer needs, preferences, and pain points is crucial for deriving actionable insights that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Foster cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with marketing, sales, product, and other departments to ensure insights are effectively integrated into strategic decisions.
• Continuous learning and development: Engage in professional development opportunities, attend industry conferences, and pursue relevant certifications to keep your skills sharp and maintain a competitive edge.
• Communicate insights effectively: Tailor your communication style to the audience, whether it’s through detailed reports, custom analytics dashboards, or executive summaries, to ensure the insights are understood and actionable.

Best resources for customer insights managers

Working as a customer insights manager requires one to stay updated with information and tools. There are books, webinars, podcasts, blogs, and more to help augment knowledge. Here is an overview of these resources:

Best books for customer insights managers

Here are five books that every customer insights manager must read:

• Customer Relationship Management: The Foundation of Contemporary Marketing Strategy: Here is a book that balances the behavioral and database aspects of customer relationship management. It offers students an in-depth introduction to important areas of marketing.
• Managing the Customer Experience: Turning Customers Into Advocates by Shaun Smith: This book highlights companies that have turned customers into advocates, something every customer insights manager must understand.
• INSPIRED: How To Create Tech Products That Customers Love by Marty Cagan: dives into unique approaches that giant tech companies use to attract their customers. The insights in this book can be key to creating satisfied customers for your products.
• This is Marketing: Seth Godin: In this book, you will learn how to build trust and permission with target markets, and the art of positioning.
• The Nordstrom Way of Customer Experience Excellence: For Nordstrom, employee experience determines customer experience, and this is reinforced in this book.

Best webinars for customer insights managers

As a customer insights manager, understanding your customer base is crucial for business success. Here’s a curated list of helpful webinar sources for growing your career:

• Userpilot Events remains your go-to for user onboarding and product growth. Their webinars delve into user journey mapping, feature adoption analytics, and user sentiment analysis – all providing valuable data points for customer insights.
• Qualtrics offers webinars on using their experience management (XM) platform to gather customer feedback and analyze customer journeys. Learn how to identify customer pain points, optimize touchpoints across the customer journey, and improve customer satisfaction.
• Services like CustomerThink and CX Accelerator offer premium subscriptions with access to exclusive webinars and research reports on customer insights and best practices.
• CXPA (Customer Experience Professionals Association) offers webinars and resources on best practices in customer experience management. Gain insights from industry leaders on building a customer-centric culture and using data to drive customer loyalty.

Best blogs for customer insights managers

Blogs are a great source of information for customer insight managers. Here are several blogs that you should not miss:

• Userpilot: This blog has hundreds of articles on various topics linked to customer insights. Learn what customer insights are, how to leverage customer insights AI, how to create robust customer insights, and much more.
• Intercom: Intercom is a popular software company specializing in customer support software. They conduct original surveys on what customers want and can help you create a better experience for them.
• ClientSuccess: This award-winning software company’s blog is filled with useful insights for customer success managers.
• Zendesk: The customer service solution provider Zendesk provides this blog to offer insights into customer behavior, customer experience and strategies to improve customer experience.
• CustomerThink: Here is another thorough blog from a community of business leaders that covers everything from customer experience management to customer success and much more.

Best podcasts for customer insights managers

Here are some podcasts that will make your journey into this career path very easy:

• The consumer insights podcast: You can hear how leading brands are creating strategies for business development.
• Getting to aha! with Darshan Mehta: No business can thrive without customer insights. Learn more about the topic from this podcast by experienced professionals.
• Happy market research podcast by Jamin Brazil: Listen to interviews with top minds in the world of market research on tech and industry trends. This is a podcast that can help you uncover more ways to gather and use customer insights.
• Reel talk: The customer insights show: Christoph Trappe shares valuable ideas to help you understand your customers better to avoid churn. He discusses insights and how to use the data most effectively.
• Conversation with Zendesk: Listen to amazing conversations as Zendesk experts bring you the latest news, market trends, and marketing tactics in customer experience.

Best tools for customer insights managers

Leveraging the right tools for customer insights can significantly enhance your ability to gather, analyze, and act on customer data. Here are some essential tools:

• Best tool for feedback collection and product analytics – Userpilot: A no-code tool, Userpilot lets customer insight managers trigger in-app surveys, conduct funnel and path reports, and visualize data on custom dashboards that are easily sharable with stakeholders.
• Best tool for project management – Jira: Jira is an excellent project management tool designed for agile teams. With robust features for sprint planning, user behavior tracking, and reporting, Jira ensures your customer insights projects stay organized and on track.
• Best tool for team collaboration – Monday: Monday.com is a versatile project management and team collaboration platform. It offers customizable workflows, customer journey visualization, and seamless integration with other tools.
• Best tool for customer support – Zendesk: Zendesk is a leading customer support platform that provides comprehensive solutions for managing customer inquiries and support tickets. Its robust analytics and reporting features help you track customer issues, measure response times, and improve overall customer satisfaction.
• Best tool for customer relationship management – Zoho Desk:  Zoho Desk is one of the best solutions designed to streamline customer support operations. It offers multi-channel support, automation features, and detailed analytics, making it easier to understand customer behavior and deliver personalized support.
• Best tool for inbound marketing and sales – HubSpot: HubSpot offers a suite of tools for marketing, sales, and customer service. Its customer insights capabilities include detailed analytics, lead tracking, and customer feedback management, helping you align your strategies with customer needs.
• Best tool for customer engagement – Custify: Custify is one of the best customer success tools that emphasizes customer engagement and retention. It offers automated workflows, health scores, and detailed analytics, enabling you to monitor customer satisfaction and intervene proactively to prevent churn.

Conclusion

Now that you have a better understanding of the salary range for a customer insights manager position, you can take steps to improve your earning potential. Consider pursuing relevant certifications, developing your skillset, or negotiating effectively during the job offer stage.

Looking into tools for customer insights managers? Userpilot is an all-in-one product platform with engagement features and powerful analytics capabilities. Book a demo to see it in action!