This year, customer-centricity is one of the topics that has been on the mind of all marketers. Many brands are taking steps towards customer-centricity, like investing in segmentation tools and adjusting marketing strategies to focus on what the customer wants. However, 55% of marketers still believe they are not getting personalization right. So, what are brands missing?
To become truly customer-centric, brands need to evaluate the technology and database they have in place. A legacy CRM system that stores customer information at a macro level doesn’t cut it anymore, and brands need their database to show all the information about a customer in one place. This is easier said than done, and will take investment in time and other resources. To help you start, below are three steps that outline what to look for in a customer-centric database:
- Think of all the behaviors you’re tracking – What are the different channels your brand uses? Some common channels are email, e-commerce, POS, digital advertising, direct mail, call center, and mobile. Are you tracking how your customer interacts with your brand through these channels? Are you looking at clickstream, email activity, in-store shopping behaviors, customer returns, complaints to the call center, or anything else? If you are only tracking some of these things, you are off to a good start, and can still become customer-centric. Make a list of where you are tracking customers, what behaviors you’re tracking, and the partner that you are tracking these behaviors through. Once you have a full picture of your customer data, you know what types of integrations need to take place to get a customer-centric database.
- Consolidate data into a single place – Once you know all the different data points that need to be consolidated into a single view, you want to find a database that can easily integrate with all your partners. Ideally, the database will be able to ingest data about all your customers, organize it into customer profiles, and deliver those profiles with the most up-to-date information back to those touchpoints to create the most up-to-date, frictionless, customer experience.
- Make strategic decisions based on consolidated data – Once you find a customer database that consolidates all your information on one place, you can begin analyzing and making strategic decisions based on the full customer journey. You can identify strengths and weaknesses, and optimize individual channels based on how the customer interacts with your brand on a holistic level. Your customer database should make it easy to analyze different aspects of your customers, such as lifetime purchases, lag days, prior purchase segment, new product flag, or modeled future behavior. With these new insights, it will be possible to test and make decisions to optimize the lifecycle of your customers.
At Customer Portfolios, we know that even with this primer, switching to a customer-centric organization is not an easy task. That’s why over the last 16 years, we have made it our business to work with brands and help them become more customer-centric. Our customer database integrates with a growing number of marketing technology to capture and enhance your customer data, and our team of experts works with your team to develop insights about your data and help you make it actionable. For more information about how we can help you create a customer-centric database, schedule a call with our team.
