Omni-Channel Data Calls For A 360-Degree Customer View

Thursday, Jun 21st 2018
person golding globe with lines and connections in front of sunset

Without an accurate and complete view of the customer, organizations struggle to address their (future) customer properly. Data issues get in the way of understanding customer preferences, tailoring communications, responding quickly and, ultimately, optimizing the customer experience (CX). To fully leverage data as a strategic business asset, the organization must put data at the center of the CX technology ecosystem. To do that you have to be able to capture and leverage customer data from every channel. 

 

Historically, consolidating data has been a challenge for even the most motivated marketers, because the data has been collected piecemeal. It arrives through social channels, third parties, call centers, sales, marketing, and more. And it ends up in lots of different systems and spreadsheets, with a variety of formats, scattered over a hodge-podge of servers. While combining that data may seem like an overwhelming task, according to a BlueVenn survey, marketers recognize that bringing multiple data sources together into a cleansed and marketing-ready 360-degree customer view would provide the greatest ROI. So, what’s holding them back? There are solutions that will help organizations prepare a solid data foundation for their data-driven marketing strategy and, ultimately, improve CX. 

 

Know who you’re dealing with

The CMO Council found that only a quarter of their marketing respondents indicated that they were able to connect customer identities across multiple systems. That means the other 75% still risk incoherent, profuse or negative customer interactions. With customer information stuck in silos, the left hand will never know what the right hand is doing. Imagine that a telco provider contacts a customer and says, “We know you have a fixed-line connection, but if you subscribe to our mobile network as well, we’ll give you a 30% discount for the first six months.” But surprise, the customer already had a mobile number with them! That customer is not going to be happy to be offered a discount that they can’t have, for something for which they’re already paying. That’s the very definition of a bad customer experience and it underscores why it’s critical to connect customer identities across multiple systems.

 

Gartner research shows that 40% of all business initiatives fail due to poor data quality. When the business understands that data is the root cause of a failed initiative, they experience an aha moment and take the first step toward finding a solution. As you research solutions, be sure that they have business user capabilities. For instance, look for an interface for marketing or customer data analysts so that they can review records that could not be automatically or confidentially cleansed and corrected. Ease of use is an important feature for business users, as it will help your marketing department remove the reliance on the IT department. 

 

These are just a few examples of the benefits a 360-degree customer view will bring. To explore this topic further, and learn how a 360-degree customer view might help your organization deal with multi-channel data, we invite you to download this free white paper: “Do you care for customers? Make your marketing efforts data-driven.”