Understanding the customer journey is nothing short of challenging, especially when your customers engage with you across multiple digital channels. To that end, Contentsquare has announced enhancements to its digital analytics platform to help customers improve their understanding of their customers and make smarter, more informed decisions. And - of course - some new AI features are a part of those updates.
Contentsquare acquired Hotjar in 2021 and Heap in 2023. Both analytics solutions exist separately but are now combined into the new Experience Intelligence Platform. This platform provides 360-degree view analytics of the customer journey for the web and mobile apps, helping companies improve engagement and conversions.
Jean-Christophe Pitié, Contentsquare CMO and Chief Partner Officer, argues that what's unique about Contentsquare is its support for companies of all sizes. From SMBs to enterprise companies (there are currently 3700 enterprises), Contentsquare is used on over 1.3 million websites today.
How do you create an analytics platform that works for all companies? Pitié says that SMBs need a platform that is easy to use and provides more self-service. In contrast, enterprises need more in-depth features and have many governance, security, and privacy requirements. Bringing Hotjar together with Contentsquare allows them to serve both markets.
The new Experience Intelligence Platform offers four plan tiers: Freemium, Growth, Pro, and Enterprise Plan. The Freemium and Growth Plans are designed for SMBs, while the Pro and Enterprise plans offer more sophisticated features and capabilities.
Contentsquare has focused on what it calls "practical AI." Pitié says Contentsquare has been working with AI for the last four to five years, but has been piloting and prototyping with generative AI for the last 18 months:
We've really been focusing on practical AI. What does that mean? How do we provide tangible, real-world benefits and solve real problems for our customers and their users?
Customers have said two things:
(1) They have too many data sources that aren't well connected. Every team uses a different tool, and there is often no single source of truth that everyone agrees on.
(2) They don't have enough time to analyze the data to get insights from their tools.
Practical AI can help resolve these challenges, Pitié argues:
I think with AI and practical AI, our intent is really to say, 'Hey, you're going to be more proactive. You won't need a PhD in analytics to get the insights and to improve your customer experience'.
So, what exactly does practical AI mean in the Contentsquare platform?
First, it means faster set-up and onboarding when you deploy the platform. With Contentsquare, a single tag is automatically deployed to the website, and the AI can automatically map web and app content and label customer events.
Second, there is a new AI co-pilot to help get answers quickly. So, for example, instead of going to the Dashboard, you can ask the co-pilot to "show me the conversion rate of this page for the last six months." The co-pilot will retrieve the data and show it in an expanded view.
Some additional things the AI can do:
Finally, customers can export their data to systems like AWS, Microsoft, and Snowflake for deeper analysis.
Contentsquare is an EU-based company whose first customers were in the EU, so it's no stranger to compliance with privacy regulations. Pitié said that they were compliant with GDPR and data residency laws early on. This compliance requirement is another reason Contentsquare took time to implement AI in the platform.
As to why Contentsquare built a co-pilot instead of an agent, the theory is that the technology and data sets aren't ready for a fully automated agent. Instead, think about the concept of an AI analyst which is only as good as your data set. Contentsquare has the data, and is now working on how to train a smart and capable AI analyst.
Pitié said to expect more AI features as the company gains more insights from customers and learns what's helping them and what they want:
We really want to democratize access to analytics and deliver great customer experience. So, we really want SMBs to have access to this technology. And also, as I said earlier, having the data is super important to be able to train our agents. So, having a freemium model also enables us to get more data, and then train our AI models, and get smarter and so on. So it's really a virtuous flywheel we are trying to build with the freemium model.
Along with the new AI features, Contentsquare has some additional new capabilities.
Finally, if you check out Contentsquare's website, you'll see a new brand identity that brings together Contentsquare with Hotjar and Heap under a single brand. For now, P said the Hotjar and Heap sites will be branded as "Hotjar by Contentsquare" and "Heap by Contentsquare." Over time, though, Pitié said they will become fully integrated, and customers will transition to the new platform.
It was only a matter of time before Hotjar, Heap, and Contentsquare were combined into a single platform. Each provides a unique set of capabilities that, when combined, offer companies a more complete understanding of the customer journey.
No, SMBs don't need the deep analytics that enterprise customers do. However, they do still need analytics capabilities across all aspects of the customer journey. Contentsquare's new Freemium and Growth plans give them those capabilities under one platform.
The AI co-pilot is also a much-needed capability, especially for small businesses. Not everyone is an analytics expert, nor do they have the time to become one. If the co-pilot can give them the information they need quickly (and accurately), they can make changes to their product and customer experiences faster. And that, after all, is the end goal.
