Why companies are struggling to build a ‘single customer view’

Organ­i­sa­tions that invest heav­i­ly to build a data-dri­ven “sin­gle cus­tomer view”, enabling per­son­alised expe­ri­ences, are like­ly to reap huge rewards. And I can vouch for that.

At the risk of offend­ing fam­i­ly and friends, by far the great­est high­light of a recent birth­day was receiv­ing a per­son­alised cel­e­bra­to­ry email from the cap­tain of the foot­ball club I have sup­port­ed since I could kick a ball. 

While it was a sur­prise to see his grin­ning por­trait and accom­pa­ny­ing mes­sage land­ing in my inbox, it trig­gered a gid­dy response. The feel­ing of being unique and val­ued over­pow­ered any ratio­nal scep­ti­cism that my Pre­mier League team’s super­star skip­per had tak­en the time to con­grat­u­late my age mile­stone. 

This nifty, cost-effec­tive note, made pos­si­ble because the club some­how knew my birth date,  embold­ened my trust and loy­al­ty. I duly spent hun­dreds of pounds in the online shop on kits, mugs and hats, and marked with a flag the email, which I often click on when need­ing either a mood lift or guid­ance.

Busi­ness­es will score if they use real-time data to com­mu­ni­cate with cus­tomers at appro­pri­ate times, and it comes across as sin­cere and authen­tic, says Adam Spear­ing, chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer for Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa at Sales­force. “Brands can build trust through mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions with their cus­tomers, antic­i­pat­ing their needs and delight­ing them,” he says. 

“Hav­ing a 360-degree cus­tomer view is cru­cial for enabling brands to have more per­son­al and con­tex­tu­al­ly aware inter­ac­tions with cus­tomers. The more valu­able an inter­ac­tion is for a cus­tomer, the more inclined they will be to con­tin­ue to trust a brand to use their data appro­pri­ate­ly.” 

Spear­ing warns there is “a fine line”, though: “Only if brands use the data respect­ful­ly will they gain that trust.” Here­in lies the main chal­lenge with build­ing a sin­gle cus­tomer view.

Slow and steady wins trust

There are myr­i­ad ben­e­fits to invest­ing in dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty specif­i­cal­ly to build a sin­gle cus­tomer view by uni­fy­ing all rel­e­vant data into a cen­tralised pro­file. Done well, aside from improv­ing all-impor­tant cus­tomer trust and loy­al­ty, it can guide mar­ket­ing, boost cus­tomer ser­vice, bet­ter mod­el con­sumer habits and, there­fore, gen­er­ate more accu­rate pre­dic­tions and increase rev­enue.

Yet there are many pit­falls to dodge to obtain this view. For instance, brands need to con­nect all his­tor­i­cal data with real-time behav­iour­al data, which means dig­i­tal iden­ti­ties should grow organ­i­cal­ly over time.

“Achiev­ing a sin­gle cus­tomer view remains a huge chal­lenge for many busi­ness­es due to the mul­ti­ple touch­points the aver­age cus­tomer faces when deal­ing with an organ­i­sa­tion and the rapid rate at which data is gen­er­at­ed,” says Gavin Lau­ge­nie, head of strat­e­gy and insight at dot­dig­i­tal, an omnichan­nel mar­ket­ing automa­tion plat­form.

He points to a recent Exper­ian study that found 92 per cent of com­pa­nies do not have access to a sin­gle cus­tomer view. Lau­ge­nie says this “stag­ger­ing” fig­ure is most­ly because the many touch­points result in frag­ment­ed and siloed data. “The key to get­ting around this is by adopt­ing tech­nol­o­gy that not only allows you to com­mu­ni­cate with all of your data touch­points, but pool the data and enable you to use it quick­ly and eas­i­ly,” he says.

A sin­gle cus­tomer view will pro­vide the foun­da­tion from which an organ­i­sa­tion can “eas­i­ly read the data and plot the right mes­sages to send indi­vid­u­als as they nav­i­gate their unique jour­neys with you”, says Lau­ge­nie. Once armed with the data, it is cru­cial not to bom­bard cus­tomers, though.

“It’s a con­tin­u­ous process and that mutu­al shar­ing process will gen­er­ate trust, which is essen­tial, espe­cial­ly for old­er online shop­pers,” he adds. “Slow and steady will win the race.”

Rising appetite for personalisation

Benoit Sou­caret, group cre­ative direc­tor at LiveArea, a glob­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ence agency, con­curs. “Good per­son­al­i­sa­tion shouldn’t appear per­son­alised at all,” he says. “Instead it should appear for­tu­itous, deliv­er­ing val­ue to a con­sumer at the right time, in the right place, in the right way. 

“It is less about sell­ing con­sumers prod­ucts and more about com­ple­ment­ing their life expe­ri­ences. At no point can it appear dis­con­cert­ing, intru­sive or annoy­ing.”

There appears to be a ris­ing appetite for per­son­al­i­sa­tion, accord­ing to research pub­lished by the Data & Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (DMA). Some 39 per cent of con­sumers are “per­son­al­i­sa­tion fans”, a group whose mem­bers pre­fer offers to reflect their inter­ests instead of being sur­pris­ing. A fur­ther 33 per cent appre­ci­ate both per­son­alised offers and those that are more ran­dom. Only 28 per cent do not favour per­son­al­i­sa­tion. 

“This strong desire for per­son­al­i­sa­tion is encour­ag­ing for brands want­i­ng to strength­en their rela­tion­ship with exist­ing cus­tomers,” says Tim Bond, head of insight at the DMA. But he iden­ti­fies some­thing else brands seek­ing to build a sin­gle cus­tomer view must beware: poor qual­i­ty or mis­used data. 

Con­sid­er how, in Jan­u­ary 2020, Avi­va addressed its entire email base as “Michael”, prov­ing that mis­takes can creep in, even with basic data. “The assump­tions, errors and insults will be ampli­fied with each step more per­son­al,” says Tom Kennedy, M&C Saatchi’s senior art direc­tor.

Bond agrees: “For a cen­tralised pro­file to have mean­ing­ful val­ue, busi­ness­es must have a sys­tem in place that can analyse data on pre­vi­ous inter­ac­tions and com­bine it with insights from real-time user jour­neys. Only then can busi­ness­es tru­ly under­stand a customer’s pref­er­ences and val­ues.

“Hav­ing the right data, con­sent and pref­er­ence man­age­ment process­es in place is imper­a­tive for busi­ness­es that want to guar­an­tee and gain the max­i­mum val­ue for and from their cus­tomer data.”

Connecting online and offline data

In par­tic­u­lar, mar­keters under­stand the mer­its of a sin­gle cus­tomer view, accord­ing to anoth­er recent DMA study. Such a sys­tem enables brands to offer more per­son­alised expe­ri­ences (45 per cent of respon­dents recog­nised this as a ben­e­fit) and increased trans­paren­cy (44 per cent gave this the thumbs up). “These are two key fac­tors in fos­ter­ing long-term cus­tomer loy­al­ty and trust,” says Bond.

Con­sumer expec­ta­tions in this area are also ris­ing. Some 78 per cent now expect con­sis­tent inter­ac­tions across depart­ments and four in five won’t buy from com­pa­nies they don’t trust, a report from Sales­force shows.

Giv­en the uptick in demand for cus­tomer per­son­al­i­sa­tion, there is an urgent need for busi­ness­es of all sizes to evolve for the dig­i­tal age. “The grow­ing preva­lence of ecom­merce and mul­ti­chan­nel cus­tomer jour­neys through 2020 only increased the impor­tance of under­stand­ing your cus­tomers’ dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty,” says Matthew Avery, enter­prise sales man­ag­er at Infin­i­ty, a cloud-based call-track­ing plat­form. 

Avery argues that many busi­ness­es are not tak­ing advan­tage of the tech­nol­o­gy now avail­able to con­nect online and offline data, includ­ing tele­phone calls and point-of-sale sys­tems. “If you’re cur­rent­ly only mon­i­tor­ing the touch­points where cus­tomers final­ly con­vert, you risk neglect­ing your under­stand­ing, and opti­mi­sa­tion, of piv­otal engage­ments high­er up the sales fun­nel,” he says.  

How­ev­er, Megan Jones, senior strate­gist at R/GA Lon­don, wor­ries that some larg­er com­pa­nies, where depart­ments work in silos, are sim­ply not set up to max­imise the poten­tial of a sin­gle cus­tomer view. “Lega­cy organ­i­sa­tions strug­gle to exe­cute these grand visions,” she says. “This fail­ure can be caused by many rea­sons, includ­ing a lack of dig­i­tal tal­ent or poor data pro­fi­cien­cy. Ulti­mate­ly, it comes down to a lack of strat­e­gy and under­stand­ing.”

Clear­ly, for those who have their sights set on craft­ing a sin­gle cus­tomer view, the road to glo­ry is fraught with chal­lenges. To help guide the way, per­haps busi­ness lead­ers can make use of an inspi­ra­tional per­son­alised email from their favourite foot­ball team’s cap­tain, too.