Three Critical Best Practices for Utilizing Customer-Centric Data

Today’s customers have high expectations when it comes to customer experience and making purchasing decisions. Consumers are looking for high-quality shopping experiences, both online and in-store. They expect companies to provide a clear shopping interface, visually appealing websites and storefronts, easy access to customer support, and simple checkout processes when interacting with brands.

You may be wondering, “How can I ensure my company offers all this to meet customers’ standards?” The key to creating a valuable customer experience is to uncover specific consumer preferences through your data. Gaining a complete, 360-degree view of customer data can unlock insights into your clientele that you were previously unaware of, allowing you to create a customer-centric business.

Developing a complete, comprehensive customer profile can be a difficult challenge, as businesses often have difficulty compiling disparate data sources. A single data source may have worked well enough in the past, but today’s customers have diversified the way they go about daily activities, including obtaining goods and services. Companies must reevaluate how they analyze customer data if they want to continue to grow and scale.

Three Best Practices for Using Your Customer Data

Bring Disparate Data Sources Together

On its own, your customer relationship management (CRM) system only offers a narrow view of the data available to you, making it impossible to rely on that system exclusively in order to gain a 360-degree view of the customer. There are numerous data silos in your system that offer the information you need, but you must have the tools in place to aggregate and analyze your siloed data.

The data you need can be found across various internal department systems, including marketing, customer support, and sales, which commonly capture data from various customer touchpoints. Important customer data can also be found across your mobile applications or loyalty programs. Customer activities on these platforms can offer valuable insight into customer preferences and behavior. Finally, data from your social media platforms can also help you better understand your customers, especially how they feel about your company. Make sure to compile findings from social media to better understand customer perception of your company and products.

Create a Customized Experience

Consumers today expect a shopping experience that is tailored to their wants and preferences. Your customer data offers insights into everyone’s unique buying behavior, preferences, and perception of your brand. Building a 360-degree view of your customer data allows you to shape sales channels and marketing campaigns according to their preferences. Furthermore, a unified customer profile allows you to tailor the shopping experience to each customer’s unique taste.

An example of optimizing the customer experience is to use data to send shoppers discounts on items that they’ve viewed while browsing your online store but haven’t yet purchased. Another way to improve sales and customer satisfaction could be to use customer data and market basket analysis to pair products that are frequently purchased together, recommending them once a shopper has added something to their cart. Using data insights makes it possible to offer customized deals, create product bundles, and optimize product placement for the ideal customer experience.

Improve Customer Retention

By gathering your data together into a complete, unified customer profile and creating compelling shopping experiences, organizations will ultimately earn better customer loyalty. Assembling your customer data allows you to develop a more complete view of customer behaviors, sentiment, and buying patterns. You will better understand how shoppers feel about their experience, and you can more easily determine areas of adjustment as needed.

Customer data can provide companies with the insights they need to create better marketing and sales promotions, improve customer service, and improve on customer experiences in-person and online. All of this has a direct impact on the likelihood of purchasers shopping with you in the future, and a data-informed customer strategy will lead to improved retention and a higher sales volume.

Uncover Customer Insights and Grow Your Business

Actian’s Customer Data Analytics Hub offers strategic capabilities for organizations looking to design a better customer profile and an experience that is uniquely tailored to each shopper. Learn more about how Actian’s Customer Data Analytics Hub can help you unify your customer data by unlocking silos, giving you the insights to grow your business.

About Traci Curran

Traci Curran serves as Director of Product Marketing at Actian focused on the Actian Data Platform. With more than 20 years of experience in technology marketing, Traci has previously held senior marketing roles at CloudBolt Software, Racemi (acquired by DXC Corporation), as well as some of the world’s most innovative startups. Traci is passionate about helping customers understand how they can accelerate innovation and gain competitive advantage by leveraging digital transformation and cloud technologies.