Have you ever seen those 360-degree cameras on the red carpet at awards shows?
A famous person will stand in the middle, and multiple cameras placed around it will capture images of the star simultaneously, creating a great look that gives you a 360° view of the person.
Now visualize if you could do that with your target public? Take them from all angles as they interact with your brand. With a single view of the consumer, you can.
The problem is that many companies don’t know where to start.
By finishing this article, you will understand what a Single View of the Customer is and how to create one for your brand.
What is a Single View of the Customer?
The Single Customer View (SVC) is a centralized platform that allows you to have a holistic view of your customers throughout the buyer’s journey. With an SVC, you can identify and track every interaction you have with your current and potential customers, allowing you to develop relevant and targeted strategies.
A Single View of the Customer combines data from a consumer’s web and email behavior, social media activity, demographics, customer service interactions, and purchase history.
Let’s take the example of an interaction between a consumer and a brand.
A consumer, let’s call him Jaz, discovers a brand on Instagram. Jaz visits the brand’s website via Instagram and downloads a free offer. Said brand adds Jaz to an email list, and she starts receiving emails.
After months of no interactions, Jaz rediscovers the brand and makes a purchase. A month later, she calls customer service about a problem with her product.
In just a few months, Jaz had contact with at least three departments of the company: marketing, sales and customer service. In many companies, each department tracks data using its own system.
For example, sales teams often use customer relationship management (CRM) to track their interactions with customers, while marketing teams use marketing platforms and automatics tools to develop leads.
This generates huge data gaps, making it difficult to understand a user’s behavior over a long period beyond a single vertical. It can also lead to duplication of information, which leads to dirty data.
For example, Jaz may receive advertisements for products she has previously purchased. Or she may receive a call from customer service asking about a product she has already reviewed via email.
Using a single customer view allows businesses to create personalized interactions with customers at their present stage in the customer lifecycle. This makes a better customer experience, greater brand loyalty, and better retention rates.
When you know your target public, you can make enticing offers based on their current needs. This is customization at its best.
Benefits of a single view of the customer
If you invest in a platform with a single view of the customer, you:
- Use cleaner data — With an integrated system, you break down information silos, which are often the cause of data duplication.
- Get better insights — When you have an accurate map of the customer journey, you can better understand your campaign performance and identify areas for improvement.
- Assign the right credits to the right channels — Correct attribution is a major issue when it comes to audience tracking. With an SVC, you can identify the best and worst performing channels for future campaigns.
How to Create a Single View of the Customer
- Align your data owners and your key performance indicators.
- Find the right technology.
- Engage data managers.
- Sort and integrate all the data from your old systems.
- Define your data governance strategy.
- Test your processes.
- Align your data owners and your key performance indicators.
The first step in creating an SVC is to align all data owners in your business.
It’s necessary to align your teams early on with key goals and key indicators of progress. That allows everyone to be on the same page and aim for the same goal.
So, although each works on different sections, all contribute to the same objective. This is key to keeping everyone in the same mindset and making the transition to a data-driven approach easier.
Your data owners will serve as the liaison between IT and your team, enforcing governance standards and providing IT with the access it needs.
By this process, your IT team will be instrumental as they will need to consolidate data from multiple systems and sources.
2. Find the right technology.
The next step is to find a platform that has the capabilities to meet your business needs.
The basics features to consider when looking for a platform are:
- Software usability and accessibility
- CRM integration
- Data quality tools
- Automation
You should consider the size of your business and the scalability of the software. An all-in-one CRM platform that combines sales, marketing, and customer service data to deliver a holistic customer experience.
3. Hire data managers.
Relying on the size of your business, you may want to integrate data-dedicated roles, such as data analysts, data miners, and data migration specialists.
The data migration process is an expensive and time-consuming process that you may not be equipped for. Instead, hire experts who have the experience and knowledge to do it correctly.
They will be important during the initial construction phase and when you grow your customer base.
4. Sort and integrate all data from your old system.
If you’re a recognized brand with tons of data scattered around, you’ll need to sort through your systems.
Start by performing a data quality audit. From there, clean up your data so you can start integrating it with your other systems, including:
- Your data warehouse
- Your point of sale system
- Your automation of marketing systems
- Your call center systems
5. Define your data governance strategy.
As you are cleaning up old data, you will need a new system for incoming new data.
This is where your data governance standards come in. They serve as operational guidelines for extracting, storing, and processing data.
Might you be interested in the difference between a data management strategy and a data governance strategy? The first refers to your actions to meet the guidelines outlined in your governance strategy.
To learn how to develop a governance strategy.
6. Test your processes.
The final step in this process is to test your new centralized system.
To ensure your new environment is working (i.e., data matching is complete), some test data will need to be used to ensure data is collected, reported, and stored precisely on your platform.
It will be an ongoing process as your business grows and you establish new touchpoints.
The sooner your team can implement a Single Customer View framework, the better equipped you will serve your target audience. Although the process can be expensive and time-consuming, it is a worthwhile investment to help you make strategic business decisions.
