Different customers use different modes of communication with their favorite brands. In this digital era, many people spend their time online. Brands can utilize this opportunity to collect insights regarding their customer’s behaviors, expectations, interests, and more.
Those who connect offline might also use online platforms to check the status of their queries and complaints. Social media, websites, and other online platforms have also emerged as safe places to communicate with brands.
As a brand owner, do you want a unified view of your customers? Or are you a marketer who wants to streamline customer communication and track all conversations from a single place? Before getting into these nuances, I will explain the benefits and true meaning of ‘one-view-of-the-customer’!
As per a recent study by Deloitte, around 62% of customers feel emotionally connected with their preferred brands. An unified CX (Customer Experience) helps you stay connected with your brand values. It allows you to offer consistent and reliable services to your customers. Now, let me explain the actual meaning of one-view-of-the-customer!
What is a One-View-Of-The-Customer?
A single view of customers is achieved by sharing data among the different platforms that they use for communicating. Visitors register on your website using their name, address, phone number, email ID, and other details.
You can save this data and share it across the various touchpoints through which you engage with customers. If the customer happens to engage via their social media account or mobile app, they should be able to view their past preferences.
They must be allowed to use the same registration details on the other platforms. Also, their buying preferences, user data, etc., should be uniformly reflected across the platforms.
This kind of unified view streamlines customer experiences. As a seasoned marketer, I can guarantee that it helps you offer consistent customer service. Also, building specific customer profiles using their lifestyle preferences and behaviors becomes easier. Profiling facilitates customer segmentation and provides deeper insights into their buying patterns.
Watch Out: 5 Top Customer Experience Management Trends 2023
The Evolution of Customer Interaction Channels
In the initial days, customer services were offered via physical centers. With time, online interactions such as email and telephone calls took over. Chatbots, webchats, and social media apps can serve as customer service centers.
The development of the multi-channel strategy became crucial as it provided ease for users; however, differing customer service levels and types per channel can harm your brand’s image, which a cohesive customer view prevents by ensuring a consistent tone across channels.
I can ensure that information can be shared between different parts of your company using an omnichannel approach. This way, you can provide the same good services in all the ways you talk to customers. It also lets you see all the information about customers in one place and maintain good relationships with them.
Read about: How To Create A Seamless Omnichannel Contact Center?
Benefits of a Single-View-of-Customers
You might think that a single-view-of-customer is mostly for streamlining communication and managing online reputation. Let me break this myth by presenting a detailed report from Forbes. As per this report, a unified view helps you align digital strategies with customer needs.
Apart from providing deeper insights into customer preferences, behavior, and emerging trends, a single view of customers also offers these benefits:
1. Cross-Channel Marketing
A modern customer expects fully-integrated and customer-centric cross-channel marketing. A single view of customers helps you manage seamless customer journeys. Do you want to develop a thorough understanding of their history, service issues, and requirements? Using the data obtained from an omnichannel platform, you can maintain the relevance of your offerings and maximize your sales through cross-selling.
2. 360-Degree Customer View
Are you planning to develop a 360-degree view of the customers by linking data obtained from various channels? I recommend the integration of a single-view-of-customers strategy across all the touchpoints.
Through an omnichannel marketing strategy, you can merge the data obtained across the channels into a single record. Through this, you can centralize the data and get a holistic view of their every activity. As a result, you can streamline your communication and engage with them in better ways.
3. Improved Customer Relationships
A unified customer view helps you develop a complete understanding of their preferences and behavior. Using these details, you can personalize the communication and offer consistent interactions across the channels. It also fosters customer relationships and helps you gain customer trust and loyalty.
4. Finer Segmentation of Customers
As a brand owner, you must create audience segments that highlight the finer nuances between customers. While creating these segments, consider their purchase history, lifecycle stages, interests, visiting patterns, user persona, contact preferences, etc.
With smart customer segmentation, you can craft powerful marketing messages based on their needs. It allows you to target customers with tailored messages and drive customer satisfaction.
5. Data-Driven Decisions
A one-view-of-the-customer approach helps you make data-driven decisions. It enables you to understand the modes of communication that get better customer responses. You can identify your most valued customers and design your marketing campaigns accordingly.
5. Tailored Customer Experiences
Reaching customers at specific touchpoints and helping them throughout their journeys is the key objective of the unified view approach. By understanding user personas and preferences on a granular level, you can deliver tailored customer experiences.
How to Create a Single View of Customers?
Creating a single view of customers is a complex process. It involves merging data at various levels and getting rid of data silos. I suggest you follow these steps to create a unified customer journey:
1. Build a Comprehensive Strategy
When you build a comprehensive strategy from one view of the customers, you must first know what you want to achieve. Different departments must engage with each other and be ready to adapt to the new changes.
Find the right data sources and select the tools and technologies to collect and merge customer data. Align them with the goals of your brand. These steps will help you create a 360-degree view of your customers.
Do you know: How Does Omnichannel Improve Customer Experience?
2. Merge Data
Identify reliable data sources first. CRM, social media, email solutions, marketing tools, and all other reliable data sources must be merged. The purpose is to create a single record for each customer. Consolidating data obtained from different sources and tracking every customer action should be part of this process.
3. Resolve Customer Identity
The same customer may use different touchpoints while interacting with your brand. You will have to match the multiple data records obtained from various touchpoints. You can use their date of birth, cookie ID, phone numbers, email address, and other details.
Develop algorithms and data analytical tools to develop a customer identifier program. Use it across your marketing campaigns to build comprehensive customer profiles.
You can create a rich and scalable customer profile with accurate profile matching. Through this, you can improve customer journeys and streamline their experiences.
Here are some: Top 10 Best Omnichannel Customer Experience Examples
Challenges Involved in Building a Unified View of Customers
Now that you know the benefits of a single-view-of-customer let me warn you about something! These are the challenges you will encounter while creating a unified view of customers:
1. Poor-Quality Data
Obtaining data from reliable sources is the key. Using outdated and incomplete data can ruin your efforts to create a unified view of customers.
To eliminate these issues, track only trusted sources and validate them regularly. Update the customer database and resolve issues like data redundancy and duplication.
2. Disconnected Data Fragments
Disconnected fragments of data or data silos can create issues while developing a single view of customers. Link data from various sources and dig deeper into customer data using analytical tools.
Use platforms that collect data from various sources and help you create comprehensive customer segments.
3. Dependence on Legacy Systems
Despite the availability of the latest digital technologies, many companies still rely on the data obtained from legacy systems. The data retrieved through such systems may not be in a suitable format or may be incomplete.
The information scattered across social platforms and data stored in legacy systems can be your biggest challenge. You must adopt an omnichannel customer experience management platform to tackle this challenge.
Konnect Insights is a platform that helps you analyze customer conversations. You can listen, evaluate, and optimize customer experiences by offering a unified CX (Customer Experience) management solution.
Let me inform you that it has over 3000 applications to use and manage customer data! It eliminates the need for legacy systems and offers a wide range of BI (Business Intelligence) tools and features. Using them, you can improve customer relationships and get a 360-degree view of your brand campaigns.
Learn about: Incredible Tools to Build an Engaging Omnichannel Customer Experience
Conclusion
I hope you now understand the relevance of a customer-centric single view of the customer. Businesses want to integrate customer data and drive marketing campaigns using customer sentiments and buying patterns. With advanced tools, you can track real-time customer data and merge it to create a single record for each customer. An omnichannel strategy can help you achieve this by offering consistent services across touchpoints.
Customer experience management suites like Konnect Insights can help you transform customer journeys. This platform can offer customer insights integrated with social listening tools and AI. You can orchestrate their experience using its user-friendly interface integrated with ORM (Online Reputation Management) features. Learn more about this unified solution for customer experience management by visiting its website today!
