Do you really know who your best customers are?

There was a time when we had ample opportunity to get to know each of our customers by name, what they like to buy, and which new products we could entice them into purchasing. We had a more linear context for our conversations with customers which made understanding them and their needs far easier.

With the explosion of digital channels across online and mobile commerce, we have access to an exponentially larger base of customers. Unfortunately, this has made it far more difficult in some respects to get a grasp on who our most valuable customers are. The sheer number of devices, channels, and competitors we need to deal with has made it increasingly challenging to have a meaningful conversation with customers around providing them with value.

At the same time, your customers now have heightened expectations around what they expect you to remember about them. At best, they believe their favourite brands should remember key details such as the types of services, offerings, and experiences they enjoy. At the minimum, they expect you to remember their previous interactions and purchases, as they’ll quickly move on to one of your competitors if they feel neglected or unimportant.

Forward-thinking businesses understand all of the above is now the status quo, so they’re exploring measures to better understand their current customers, as well as how they can find and engage with similar high value customer segments. To achieve this, they’re attempting to collect and manage the large amounts of customer data their digital channels generate. But data on its own is of little use unless it can be used to drive actionable insights.

A common barrier is created by data stored within the CRM. As this data is shared across many parts of the business, there can be a general lack of accountability. Without real ownership of shared data assets,  the quality of data begins to suffer along with the potential insights the data could provide.

Unreliable data leads to a lack of confidence that the information business users have access to has any real value at all. At the same time, your customers become disgruntled from your poorly managed data leading to sub-optimal customer experience and eventually customer churn and loss of revenue.

Tackling these issues starts with answering the following questions honestly:

• Do you know how your customer data is collected?
• Do you know where your customer data is stored? (this is particularly vital in the context of new privacy regulations)
• Do you know who has access to customer data?
• What is the quality of your customer data?
• Do you trust your customer data to drive interactions and campaigns at every level of your organisation?

Once you’ve answered the above, you can begin diagnosing the real customer data challenges you have, and building the business case for investments in data quality tools and solutions. These investments should at the minimum quantify the extent of your customer data challenges and put you on a path to remediation.

The right technology within your customer data strategy should also remove the need for time consuming manual processes, across collection, storage, and management. Having accurate and reliable customer data also opens up the possibilities of enriching it with third party data sources. Overlaying your own customer data with sociodemographic information from different customer segments within your market will further enhance your ability to acquire and manage more profitable customers in the future.

About the author:

As the General Manager of InfoCentric, my team and I provide specialised expertise, advisory and implementation services in digital and data analytics to help our clients convert data assets into business insights for competitive advantage with faster, smarter and more accurate business decisions. If you’d like to discuss how your organisation can leverage your data assets to drive operational efficiencies, attract new business, and minimise risk, please feel free to get in touch with me at [email protected].