Unlocking the power of customer data: Tips for implementing a customer data hub

Brands that focus on enhancing the customer experience can see an 80% increase in revenue. The only way you can truly enhance the customer experience is by collecting data and using it to fuel marketing and product development. But this is where many businesses go wrong. They feel intimidated by managing data in an Excel spreadsheet and instead, will base all their decisions on guesswork.

If this is you, then a customer data hub might be a good option.

A customer data hub is a piece of software that automates data management and structures your data under one digital roof. This acts as a central hub, giving all departments insight into customer behavior. This guide will show you how you can unlock the power of customer data by letting a customer data hub (like a customer data platform) do all the heavy lifting for you.

Benefits of a customer data hub

Here are a few benefits that you can expect to see soon after implementing a customer data hub:

Centralized data management

Data silos can eat into 30 percent of your business’s revenue.This is because critical customer data is stored in databases that few employees can access. If anyone else needs it to complete a project, they must contact the owner.

This can create serious organizational problems, as research shows it harms productivity and reduces the quality of work. Fortunately, everyone within your company can access the data they need when you centralize customer data management.

Improved data quality

Because customer data hubs create 360-degree customer profiles, you can easily see if a data point is being replicated or if there are structural problems, improving the quality of your data.

Better customer insights

Another benefit to 360-degree profiles is better, more meaningful customer insights. You can collect data and learn about customer buying habits, preferences, and pain points.

Enhanced customer experience

Using data to fuel decision-making can improve a customer’s experience and your marketing and sales effectiveness. The information you collect from customers is now accurate and complete, giving you an understanding of customer preferences.

Implementation of a customer data hub

Here’s a four-step formula you can use to effectively introduce a customer data hub into your business:

1. Choose a suitable vendor
2. Integrate your data hub with existing systems
3. Test and validate your customer data hub
4. Onboard existing data

Step 1: Choose a suitable vendor

Our best advice is to select a vendor based on how they meet your business needs, not the one with the most features. For example, if you’re running an ecommerce store, opt for a vendor that specializes in ecommerce. And if you’re a B2B software company, you could go for a customer data hub tailored around B2B software.

Step 2: Integrate your data hub with existing systems

You also want to consider existing business processes. For instance, are you using Google Analytics, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to drive traffic? If so, you’ll need something that’ll integrate with all these applications.

Step 3: Test and validate your customer data hub

Before going with a single software, request a demo and test your customer data hub. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What types of data does the hub collect?
• Does it offer predictive scoring and analysis?
• How easy is it to segment audiences? 

These are questions that will allow you to test the efficacy of your customer data hub and understand if it fits your use case.

Step 4: Onboard existing data

Once you’ve landed on an option that ticks all the right boxes, it’s time to migrate existing data. With Lytics, you can securely connect all your data sources with our pre-built C360 schema.

4 common problems you’ll run into

However, when you streamline data onboarding, you’ll run into problems because you’re introducing new data management tools into your organization. Here are a few issues that we see most businesses face:

Technical challenges

When requesting a demo, we highly recommend asking about the customer success team. How long does it usually take to solve a technical problem, and do you get your own account manager? These questions will give you peace of mind, knowing your business won’t come to a standstill if there’s an issue with your data hub.

Data migration and quality issues

Lower-quality customer data hubs can also cause problems with data integration quality. It might duplicate or ignore specific data sets, painting an inaccurate view of your customers. An easy way to avoid this is to go with a reputable vendor and ask for a demo before signing up for the monthly plan.

Data security and privacy concerns

Some customer data hubs also have poor security. This is a serious data governance concern because it exposes your customers to cyber criminals, leading to identity theft.

Employee training and adoption

Many businesses underestimate the training it requires to adopt a customer data hub. You can’t download an app and call it a day. You’ll have to train employees on the importance of customer data and how they can use it to make their lives easier.

Boost your customer data analytics with Lytics 

Collecting and understanding customer data is no longer optional; it drives business success. Lytics CDP (Customer Data Platform) helps you take control of your customer data by collecting and managing data and creating unified user profiles.

From here, you can combine touchpoints across a customer’s journey and manage identities for more accurate and complete data sets. This doesn’t just improve product development and marketing effectiveness; it helps you meet government data privacy regulations like CCPA (California Consumer Privacy) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

You’ll know what data you’re collecting from customers, and if they ask you to delete their data, you can do so within seconds.