Melissa UK Team | Data Matching, Deduping, Duplicate Elimination, United Kingdom

What is a single customer view?

A single customer view, also known as a 360 view of your customers is a method of consolidating all the data you have on your prospects or customers which may be entered into your systems from various channels and merging it into one single record.

Most companies will experience this problem of having scattered information about the same customer which is why matching and merging your customer data into one consolidated record will enable a powerful view demographically, as well as the actions they may have performed over mobile, online, and offline.

From our experience all databases will contain up to 10 – 15% of duplicated records, this can result in wasted marketing expenses, poor business processes, inaccurate reporting, inefficiency, and missed opportunities.

This is also crucial for organisations that may have different departments, not just for marketing.

Let us take a look at some of the benefits of achieving a single customer view can have on an organisation.

Better marketing for better customers

In today’s era, there are multiple ways to engage with your prospects, and this leads to multiple streams of data coming into an organisation’s system through the ever-growing list of digital touchpoints.

The challenge is connecting that data together from various sources so it can be viewed as a single record.

Customers have the luxury of jumping on a smartphone and then back to a tablet, creating multiple profiles under different emails, phone numbers and so on, this can make it a headache for marketers and other departments.

Using a data deduplication tool will suppress this issue being able to match and merge all these data points into one consolidated record,

The reward? – having diverse data on your prospects at your fingertips, being able to see where they have engaged with your brand whether it is via devices, location, or marketing channels.

This makes a huge difference in delivering value across the whole customer life cycle.

You can learn more about What is Data Deduplication here.

Efficiency through all departments

One core element for the success of an internal communication strategy is the quality of data they are working with, how it enters organisational systems, and if it can be interpreted by each department.

A study found by bamboo found that 29% of employees have issues when working with customer and company data from another department.

Companies need to be able to share information between teams without any hurdles that may affect workflow, productivity, and overall retention.

As it can be common for large enterprises to add new channels or use individual software based on the department needs,  the problem is often multiple sources of information being held separately through the whole company without proper integration, highlighting a need for solutions that ultimately eliminate any possibility of duplicate or obsolete data being passed around and enabling a 360-degree user view for an enterprise as a whole.

Better data for better business decisions

Bad data costs companies an average of 18% of their overall revenue which is why the quality of data you are working with plays a major factor when it comes to making appropriate business decisions.

Signs of organisational confidence to sets goals can also be achieved around the outcomes of a single customer view – a survey found that in the past 12 months, 85 per cent of companies report that they have experienced problems that could have been avoided having had an SCV solution in place. These problems are considerable and directly related to financial implications, with almost a third of respondents seeing their customers suffering from a poor insight which results in poor decision-making.

Cost down Revenue up

Organisations can see a single customer view solution as a step to building greater revenue streams; more than 8 out of 10 companies believed that an SCV solution in place helped them increase sales, cross and upsell and drive greater value from their customers.

Internal success was also surveyed with nine out of ten organisations believing that expenditures could be reduced in at least one area of their business with savings to at least 5 functions or more.

Conclusion

It is quite alarming to know that UK businesses are aware of the positives of attaining good data quality, which is one of the major elements linked to a single customer view, but only one in six reports that they have an effective solution in place.

As data becomes more of a reliable asset now is the time for your organisations to look for such solutions that enable better processes of data that lead to a single customer view, as it may be harder or implement such services depending on one’s enterprise structure, we see it as a timely investment instead than an optional extra, rather a key to unlocking competitive advantage.