Delivering an exceptional customer experience is vital for businesses to succeed. But too often, data silos and dirty data wreak havoc on even the most well-intended efforts.
Incomplete, duplicate, and outdated customer information, living in disparate, disconnected systems across the company, prevents organizations from gaining a holistic view of their customer base. And without a holistic view, they are unable to deliver the outstanding experience customers expect.
The reality is that customer data will always be distributed across myriad systems and departments, and the people who enter the data will make mistakes, causing the data to be inaccurate or incomplete.
For businesses to use customer data to deliver better customer service or more targeted marketing, they must find a way to clean, consolidate, integrate, and enrich their data, making it usable and trustworthy for everyone in the organization who needs it.
The CX Battleground
Former Dell CIO Jerry Gregoire called customer experience “the next competitive battlefield.” Organizations can use customer data to gain rich insight into the customer experience, when put to good use, such data helps organizations find opportunities to increase revenue and boost retention.
But to leverage customer data to improve experiences, organizations must recognize their data’s true value and manage it like a product. They must ensure it is clean, integrated, and complete. And they must make the individuals who are in charge of customer data accountable for making it usable for others across the organization.
Ensuring you have a holistic view of your customers is priority number one when it comes to improving customer experience. Integrating data throughout the customer lifecycle–and across various systems and technologies–is crucial and requires an effective data management strategy.
While many organizations have a data warehouse, CDP, and analytics in place, many are missing a key piece of the puzzle: customer data mastering, best done in a customer master data management system like the Pretectum CMDM.
Customer data mastering
Too often, organizations fail to see results because their data is dirty. With customer data mastering, all that changes.
Customer data mastering enables organizations to realize the full potential of their customer data. A turn-key, template-based data product, the customer master accelerates time to value when the system that manages it, combines data quality, machine learning, a low-code, no-code environment, and integrated data enrichment, enabling the organizations to have the clean, curated, continuously-updated customer data that they need to gain a holistic, 360-degree view into their customers and thereby deliver the customer experience they expect.
Customer mastering takes investments in data warehouses, CDPs, and analytics to the next level by integrating data across multiple systems and sources. It resolves issues related to inconsistent, incomplete, and outdated data. And it reduces the time data scientists and data users spend fixing dirty data.
Organizations that implement customer data mastering enjoy a culture shift, one which reinforces to the organization that customer data is valuable, and that everyone should treat it as one of the most valuable assets of the business. Because data products are the primary way users will consume data, they drive greater accountability for data owners, requiring them to ensure the data is clean, curated, and usable across the organization.
Business Benefits
Customer data mastering delivers several benefits to B2C organizations, beyond just providing a customer 360-view.
B2C organizations benefit from using integrated enrichment, companies can enrich their data to better target their offers to customers with tailored product recommendations, leading to increased cross-sell/upsell opportunities.
Customer data mastering also helps companies deliver personalized customer experiences that drive higher customer retention. And by connecting customer data to transactions, products, and external data sources, the company can also uncover untapped market opportunities.
In essence, customer data mastering empowers organizations to turn their customer data into a strategic asset. This goes beyond the traditional approaches of data management, providing a comprehensive solution that combines cleansing, consolidation, integration, and enrichment.
By adopting customer data mastering, businesses can overcome the challenges of data silos and dirty data, unlocking the full potential of their customer information.
Challenges Addressed
Data Inconsistencies: Customer data mastering resolves issues related to inconsistent data by creating a single, authoritative source for customer information. It ensures that customer data is standardized and follows a uniform format, eliminating variations that may exist in different systems.
Data Completeness: Incomplete customer data is a common challenge, especially when information is scattered across various systems. Customer data mastering addresses this by consolidating and filling in the gaps, ensuring that the organization has a complete and comprehensive view of each customer.
Data Integration across Systems: Customer data is often stored in different systems across departments, making it difficult to create a unified view. Customer data mastering integrates data seamlessly, providing a centralized hub where information from disparate systems converges, offering a unified and holistic perspective.
Data Accuracy: Dirty data, including inaccuracies and errors, can hinder decision-making and lead to misguided strategies. Customer data mastering employs machine learning and data enrichment to enhance accuracy, providing clean and reliable data for analysis and decision-making.
Time and Resource Efficiency: Manual efforts spent on fixing dirty data can be a significant drain on resources and productivity. By automating data cleaning and enrichment processes, customer data mastering frees up valuable time and resources, allowing teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
Enhanced Data Usability: Usability is a key aspect of data management. Data must not only be clean but also easily accessible and usable by various teams. Customer data mastering ensures enhanced data usability by providing a user-friendly environment, facilitating efficient access, and encouraging cross-functional collaboration.
Where customer experience is a pivotal factor in your business success, leveraging customer data effectively is non-negotiable. Customer data mastering emerges as a strategic solution, transcending the limitations of traditional data management practices. It’s a paradigm shift, treating customer data as a valuable product that requires meticulous handling.
The benefits of customer mastering extend beyond the immediate advantages of a unified customer view. It addresses core challenges faced by organizations in managing customer data, offering a comprehensive approach that aligns with the strategic goals of the business. From data inconsistency to time and resource efficiency, customer mastering catalyzes positive business transformation.
Businesses that embrace customer data mastering are not just investing in data management; they are investing in a cultural shift toward recognizing the true value of data.
All this positions data as a critical asset, shaping accountability and responsibility across the organization. As customer expectations continue to rise, and the competition intensifies, the adoption of customer mastering becomes a strategic imperative for businesses aiming not just for survival but for sustained growth and success.