CDP (Customer Data Platform)

A CDP (Customer Data Platform) is a powerful tool that leverages data to provide a comprehensive 360-degree view of all customer interactions. It goes beyond just sales and marketing, encompassing services, support, and financial perspectives, making it a crucial asset for any business.

Why is a Customer Data Platform Important?

A CDP is an important contributor to building and maintaining strong customer relationships. High customer satisfaction levels result in repeat business, endorsements for other buyers, and long-term loyalty.

The data in a CDP empowers its users with crucial context about the customer, such as their purchase history and current satisfaction level. As more data points are collected, this wealth of knowledge guides human interactions and trains AI-driven chat dialogs, instilling confidence in sales representatives, marketers, and support teams.

Constructed and Vended CDPs

A business can license a ready-built CDP solution customized to its needs. Alternatively, existing data management and integration solutions can be used to construct a custom CDP designed to fit an organization’s specific needs precisely.

Both approaches are perfectly valid if the tools used to construct the CDP (Customer Data Platform) are easy to use and do not require custom coding.

Uses for a Customer Data Platform

Sales

Sales success is heavily influenced by the quality of interactions sales have with existing customers and prospects. An analysis of CDP data can make a big difference in how an interaction goes. Examples of helpful information include how long they have been a customer, what competitors they have interacted with, whether they are on an exit path, or if they are interested in add-on features. In a renewal scenario, it is vital to know if they have unresolved support issues, outstanding enhancement requests, or if they have provided strong endorsements of the product or services.

Marketing

Marketing uses data in a CDP (Customer Data Platform) to guide buyer journeys. Deciding the next steps depends on what products the customer or prospect is interested in on the website and the digital assets they may have already downloaded. This self-selection data can qualify a lead further and decide when to turn it over to Sales.

Marketing channels segment customers to ensure their content is relevant to the recipient’s business and job function. The CDP is a valuable resource for segmentation.

Support and Services

Service and Support teams have account managers who review open issues and past interactions to choose the right time for proactive outreach. Service teams also study incident logs to identify where education or consulting services can be used to make customers more successful with the product.

Executive Relationships

Customers interact with suppliers at multiple levels. Executive sponsors are essential for larger customers when they are making strategic decisions. Executives use the CDP to track which areas the customer invests in to ensure they get shortlisted.

Benefits of a Customer Data Platform

Here are some of the key advantages of a CDP:

• Provides a complete view of the customer for use by multiple business functions.
• The customer view increases collaboration between departments, as the CDP data provides a common view of the customer with the ability to drill down to department-specific data.
• The CDP provides operational and high-level perspectives designed for different levels of management.
• The CDP improves segmentation for better communication targeting.
• The CDP maintains a centralized and current view of the customer.

Actian 360 Customer Data Analytics

The Actian Data Platform makes it easy to construct a customer data platform. It includes data integration technology to connect to any data source, build automated data pipelines, and store and analyze data. Actian customers use the data platform to segment customers, analyze interactions, and create real-time dashboards for multiple use cases.

Actian offers a customer 360 services offering to accelerate the creation of a CDP. With drag-and-drop integration, you can get customer insights to help identify, acquire, and retain customers. The powerful query designer makes it simple to get insights fast.

Learn more about Customer 360 analytics.