What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Segment is as a CDP to create a centralized view of the customer and help integrate the activation of audiences to downstream services.
A specific example of how I use Segment for this purpose is that we collect data from different data sources, and we then leverage the activation layer within Segment to populate data within Braze as the customer engagement platform. In practical terms, this could be somebody browsing our website or interacting with our loyalty system, and based on those user behaviors, we share those events and the data with those events with Braze, which is then used for personalized communications such as email, SMS, and push notifications.
That is the primary use case, and we have also implemented custom functions and transformation layers within Segment.
What is most valuable?
The best features Segment offers include the ease with which we can set up new data sources, the protocol structure they have for validating that the data is coming in the correct format, and the connection with back-end databases, mainly with Databricks where we both receive data via Databricks as well as push data to Databricks. The audience activation layer is also significant for our use case, and the ability to connect directly with the back-end database is very useful.
Segment's Databricks integration has helped our team significantly. In many cases from an audience standpoint, when building audiences, it often relates to customers as well as other data structures. With the database connection, I can create audiences, nested audiences, and other structures that connect customer data with many other types of data structures relating to loyalty, product, and purchases, and that has been a very powerful feature for us.
Segment has positively impacted my organization by making working with customer data a lot easier for us, as well as improving the speed at which we can ingest from new data sources and push to different activation layers. I have seen improvements with our time to market with Segment, which has improved dramatically due to the ease of use, allowing us to handle many use cases that were sidelined for years and now can be completed in days to weeks instead of months to years.
What needs improvement?
I think Segment can improve in terms of identity management, possibly in some of the protocols by adding more flexibility. I also see the need for more free-form searches such as regex or conditions that are not case-sensitive, which would be tremendously helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Segment for about two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Segment has been stable in my experience.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Segment for my organization's needs is very good.
Segment's scalability can be measured in terms of transaction volume, which it handled very well for us in terms of millions of records, and in terms of new use cases and functionality, we managed to find workarounds across various use cases by leveraging their functions and different activation layers, showing that from a scalable perspective, it performs quite well.
How are customer service and support?
I have had experiences with customer support from Segment, particularly when we were learning the product and expanding our use cases. Their support team was extremely helpful in resolving issues, mainly when we struggled with the Databricks connectivity.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did come from a previous system before Segment, but I am currently unable to recall what the system was, and it just was not adhering to all the needs we had.
How was the initial setup?
The integration process with Segment was generally straightforward, although we faced a couple of challenges with Databricks, which I believe were due to corporate policies implemented within our Databricks environment that created the complexities.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with Segment, primarily around time saved, and it also means we have had many more business-related users able to leverage it rather than needing development.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Segment, we evaluated other options, including Azure Data, which was the next major competitor we considered, as well as Adobe Experience Platform.
What other advice do I have?
For the basic functionality, the learning curve for new users getting started with Segment is very easy.
I find Segment relatively flexible within the defined functionality, and the ability to add custom functions helps extend that considerably.
Segment's documentation and resources provided are helpful.
Segment integrates very well with all our other tools.
I appreciate the simplicity in terms of getting into and leveraging Segment. Compared to some other CDPs, those options felt much more complex to reach the same stage, which is why I valued the simplicity of Segment.
I advise others looking into using Segment to understand who their intended users of the data are, what processing they want to conduct on that data, and how clean their input versus output will be. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.