Customer 360: To build or not to build?

Imagine having a complete picture of your customer: their preferences, needs and history with your brand. The possibilities are endless when you can fully understand who your customers are and what they want.

With a customer 360 approach to your model, you can leverage data to provide a full perspective on your customers. However, harnessing the power of data from multiple sources can be challenging.

The question that many organizations ask is whether the considerable benefits of customer 360 models are worth it.

What is customer 360?

Customer 360 models integrate data about your customers in one place. All the data appears in a single dashboard available across the organization. Data can come from multiple sources, including purchasing history, website analytics, email engagement, browsed items and engagement with social media.

Collectively, this information provides incredible opportunities. It’s a way for your company to glean insights that would previously be difficult to unearth. Part of the challenge is that too many existing CRM systems will compartmentalize this data. When data are isolated, the possibility of connecting the dots across data sets becomes difficult, if not impossible.

Advantages to customer 360 modeling

Having a customer 360 approach to data has multiple benefits to your organization, including:

• Understanding customers and behaviors. Customer 360 models give you a clearer understanding of customers’ behaviors and preferences. It provides a more complete picture of a customer’s activities and priorities. It also provides context. Instead of just tracking that a customer called a support line, for example, you can contextualize their questions and align that call to their most recent purchases
• More strategic sales and marketing. A 360-degree customer view can act as an extension of your sales and marketing teams. More details help these teams build better, more strategic approaches and marketing campaigns that target interests and needs
• Ability to deliver personalized experiences. Customers today want personal relationships with the brands they use. By collecting and using data on past preferences and buying, you can provide customers with personalized shopping experiences. Aggregated experiences can capture the lifetime customer journey. Then, you can use that information to deliver opportunities that are customized for each customer
• Improved predictive analytics. A customer 360 model does more than record what your customers have done in the past. The model allows you to use those histories to develop better customer intelligence. Predictive analytics use data to inform likely future behaviors. It’s a key benefit to customer 360 by allowing you to anticipate what comes next. By being on top of likely next steps, your sales teams can be more proactive and your marketing strategies tailored
• Enhanced customer service. When your customer service teams have access to detailed information about the customers, the interactions will be far better. Insights about past experiences can help customer service professionals anticipate needs and issues, making even the most challenging conversations go smoothly. The data can help lighten the load on customers having to explain or contextualize their concerns, allowing for better customer service experiences
• Increased customer loyalty. Keeping customers happy and connected to your brand is a constant challenge. By building customer relationships that are based on knowledge and understanding, you’ll foster long-term loyalty. Consider the opportunity that a customer 360 model provides. You can listen to customers, record engagements and create meaningful interactions that engender affinity for your brand

Challenges to a customer 360 model

The customer 360 approach is a heady one, with major opportunities for deepened engagement. However, there are challenges that come with the commitment to such a model. Here are a few of the major challenges you may face.

• Data management. Data comes at you from multiple sources and modes. Some of it will be structured and other will be unstructured. You need tools that can quantify, aggregate, record and report on data from these varied sources. Your data will exist as purchase records, Facebook or Instagram posts, form entries, help tickets and email open rates. Corralling all these data points can be complex and require a source-agnostic solution
• Identity management. Particularly when you start a customer 360 approach, you will be swimming in profiles. You may have dozens of profiles for the same customer. You need a way to consolidate and unify these identities within your data. In many cases, it may be obvious to reconcile these records. In other cases, you may need to use advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence tools to make the match
• Evolving data profiles. What you track today may not be what is relevant tomorrow. You need a database that is flexible and agile to adapt to changing demands and datasets

Lytics offers solutions that help you collect, consolidate and interpret data intuitively. Let us help you build your customer 360 approach using our flagship Cloud Connect and Decision Engine services. Get started today with a free trial to learn more.