Customer mastering takes investments in data warehouses, customer data platforms, and analytics to the next level by integrating data across multiple systems and sources.
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 Incomplete, duplicate, and outdated customer information – living in disparate, disconnected systems across the company – prevents organizations from gaining a holistic view of their customer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, however, is that customer data will always be distributed across a myriad of 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 integrate and enrich their data, making it usable and trustworthy for everyone in the organization who needs it.
Customer experience: the next competitive battleground
Former Dell CIO Jerry Gregoire called customer experience “the next competitive battlefield.” And we couldn’t agree more. Customer data is rich with insights. When put to good use, it helps increase revenue and boost retention.
However, in order to leverage customer data and do so in a way that improves experiences, organizations must recognize its true value and manage their data like a product. They must ensure it is clean, integrated, and complete. And they must ensure that the individuals in charge of customer data are accountable for making it usable for others organization-wide.
Ensuring you have a holistic view of your customers is the number one priority 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 mastering.
See also: Service Intelligence Boosts Orgs, Improves Customer Experiences
Customer mastering: a critical step to improving customer experience
Too often, organizations fail to see results because their data is dirty. With customer mastering, all that changes.
Customer mastering enables organizations to realize the full potential of their customer data. It is a turn-key templated data product that accelerates time to value by combining optimized machine learning, a low-code, no-code environment, and integrated data enrichment. This enables organizations to have the clean, curated, continuously-updated data they need to gain a holistic, 360-degree view into their customers and deliver the 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. Furthermore, it reduces the time data scientists and data users spend fixing dirty data.
Also, organizations that implement customer mastering are signaling a cultural shift. It reinforces to the organization that 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, it drives greater accountability for data owners, requiring them to ensure the data is clean, curated, and usable across the organization.
See also: Why the Role of the Retail CIO Must Evolve: Lessons to Deal with Emerging Pressures
Benefits of customer mastering
Customer mastering delivers a number of benefits to B2B and B2C organizations beyond just providing a customer 360-view.
For example, B2B organizations can increase upsell opportunities by providing a holistic view of sales for a customer, even when that data lives in disparate systems and departments across the business. Customer mastering also streamlines data operations. Through the use of machine learning, data stewards and users spend less time fixing data and more time analyzing it. Also, customer mastering helps to mitigate risk because the organization now has a full picture of potential exposures.
B2C organizations benefit as well. Using integrated enrichment, companies can enhance their data to better target their offers to customers with tailored product recommendations, leading to increased cross-sell/upsell opportunities. Customer 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.
With customer mastering, organizations can improve their customer experience, gain a competitive advantage, and boost their bottom line.
