Ensuring Ease Of Customer Data Sharing

Last week’s Insights was the first in a four-part series on the importance of becoming an authentic customer-centric organization. Research continues to demonstrate the impact that customer experience has on the bottom line and that customer-centric organizations are more successful in critical metrics including percentage of repeat customers, winning new business, customer engagement and overall profitability. Deloitte found that customer-centric companies were 60 percent more profitable compared to companies that were not focused on the customer, and 64 percent of companies with a customer-focused CEO are more profitable than their competitors.
Companies that put the customer at the heart of their organization experience an increase in customer lifetime value and a reduction in churn.
According to Harvard Business Review, enhancing the customer experience is the new competitive battleground. Yet, according to new research by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, only 14 percent of marketers say that customer centricity is a hallmark of their companies, and only 11 percent believe their customers would agree with their companies are customer centric.

This is a problem a company can solve if they are committed to change.

Last week I focused on developing a customer-centric culture. Today I plan to focus on customer data sharing.
In the past the lines between marketing, sales and customer support were more defined and organizations structured themselves along these lines. And a result, data silos formed. A data silo is a group of raw data that is accessible by one department but isolated from the rest of the organization. This results in lack of transparency, efficiency, and trust within the organization.

During my literature review the following stood out as the most effective strategies to becoming customer centric:

In an article entitled Marketing and IT:

Big Data an Obstacle, an Opportunity, and Key to Customer-Centricity by MarketingProfs.com organizational silos were cited as the most common challenge in achieving customer-centricity. And according to a recent survey by CMO Council, 52 percent of marketers and 45percent of IT professionals stated that functional silos block aggregation of data from across the organization, making it difficult to truly achieve customer-centricity.

Harnessing Big Data is imperative to building a customer-centric corporate culture. Access to in-depth data, and the ability to translate it into insights, is a competitive advantage and a critical component to becoming customer centric. Customer insights and data are no longer just the concern of marketing teams. Customer centricity requires companies to share data among the relevant teams to get a 360-degree view of the customer experience. However, in this same survey, most respondents view the flood of incoming data as part obstacle and part opportunity: 61 percent of CMOs and 60 percent of CIOs say so, admitting they still have a long way to go in using Big Data properly.

Here are some of the solutions identified in my readings:

Consolidate data management systems, starting with systems used to manage customer communications. With open-source frameworks available today, even companies with legacy systems can transform their customer communications. Data cannot be shared if departments don’t have access to proper technology. The most important step is to find the right platform for your company on which you can streamline all your data. That means no more loose Excel spreadsheets and random software shared only by individual teams.
Aggregate and analyze customer conversations (and data). Customer conversations are a trove of information. Understanding them at scale is fundamental to customer-centric business models. It can seem very daunting to go through what may be years and years of outdated, isolated data. However, collectively deciding the data that best tells the customer story and weeding out unnecessary data is an excellent way to build a customer centric culture.
Design a Customer Centric Dashboard, Review the Data and Act. When an organization is able to view, organize, analyze, and share the right data about its customers, it can easily collaborate across departmental teams to develop actionable insights to improve customer experience, loyalty, and retention. As always, I welcome your comments.

Ensuring Ease Of Customer Data Sharing

This is a problem a company can solve if they are committed to change.

During my literature review the following stood out as the most effective strategies to becoming customer centric:

In an article entitled Marketing and IT:

Here are some of the solutions identified in my readings:

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