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Getting to the data that matters can boost the customer experience
Auria Moore, director of solution strategy for customer master data management at Stibo Systems, offers up insight on how retailers can best organize and leverage their data to drive a better customer experience.
July 18, 2019 by Auria Moore — Director of Solution Strategy, Stibo Systems
By Auria Moore,director of solution strategy for customer master data management at Stibo Systems
In an increasingly competitive landscape, delivering a rewarding, memorable customer experience is a top priority for most retailers. In today's digital world, however, executing that priority is easier said than done. Modern consumers expect companies to take their purchasing preferences and patterns and turn them into a seamless buyer's journey to meet their needs.
Retailers have tried to meet these demands with varying levels of success. As big data took hold, ecommerce enterprises used a "gold rush" approach by grabbing any data that was accessible and holding on for dear life, regardless of quality or accuracy. However, more data can often lead to more problems. Let's take a look at how retailers can best organize and leverage their data to drive a better customer experience.
Ensure customer data consistency
According to IBM, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data per day. Even a small portion of this business information entering a retailer's systems represents a data overload. This can exhaust marketers, who end up unsure how to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff.
And while data is the source driving customer experience efforts, customer data is often inconsistent, outdated and siloed across various systems. For instance, a customer's name might be spelled or presented one way in a customer relationship management (CRM) system, another way in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and still a third way on a marketing platform, creating multiple, inconsistent views of the same person. Although Jane Doe, Jane E. Doe and Ms. Jane Doe are one in the same, are marketing efforts aimed at one person or three?
Duplicate, inaccurate and outdated customer data can be a nightmare for marketing campaigns and customer loyalty. It affects your ability to show consumers the products they want to see as they browse your site. Therefore, data must be synchronized across all systems for a comprehensive view of the customer.
Make the wrong data right
Gartner reports that businesses lose $15 million per year on average because of poor data quality. Not only does dirty data lead to ineffective sales and marketing campaigns, but it can also erode trust when customers think you don't know them or your outreach is redundant. Say, for instance, marketing sent out a promotional email with low open and click-through rates. Upon investigation, the team discovered its database contained 30% duplicate records for its customers, wasting time and money on an underperforming campaign.
To improve the customer experience and maximize segmentation and personalization efforts, your data must be accurate. Data should be cleansed, deduplicated and validated so it reflects the truth about the customer. And to further ensure data reliability, fragmented data sets must be eliminated, as the legacy “gold rush” mindset is not viable.
Define data that provides business value
Once a single set of quality customer data is available, it's critical to prioritize and define how it will be leveraged. And remember, since no two sites are identical, what works for one ecommerce company might not work for yours. Define what business challenges you're trying to solve so you can extract relevant customer data.
If you want to drive customer loyalty, focus on data that shows how customers are redeeming rewards or points, then recommend items they might like based on buying patterns.
The store where I buy groceries, for example, sends me paper and digital coupons and sometimes freebies of frequently purchased items. The grocer incentivized me to join its loyalty program and download its app – getting my name, phone number and address – so it could use data to personalize my shopping experience. To get me to give away my personal information, the retailer used the right data to instill loyalty.
Build a database from scratch
What if the gold rush for data is not your problem? What if you're a smaller retailer or don't have much data to begin with? How do you begin building a database of customer data? The first step toward measurable improvement is to choose the proper key performance indicators (KPIs) so you know what data is important. To improve marketing email responsiveness, for instance, look at metrics, such as open rates, click-throughs and conversions, that show how well consumers engage with your brand.
Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics track every interaction a user performs on your site. Businesses can also invest in a tag management system to connect, manage and unify their digital marketing applications. If you're building a database from scratch, these free and paid tools are an excellent place to get your data sea legs.
Quality data drives personalizing experiences
You can't build personalization campaigns or initiatives around customers you don't know and don't understand. In order to segment your customer database, you need to make sure you're looking at an accurate view of your database. It's critical to ecommerce companies who are implementing plans around improving relationships, satisfaction and revenue growth.
To get a consistent, trusted view of the customer across all systems, consider investing in an MDM solution that can create a reliable data foundation of your most critical data — ensuring that your data is high-quality, complete and fit for personalization.
About Auria Moore
Auria Moore joined Stibo Systems as the Director of Solution Strategy for Customer Master Data Management after working in the data space for over 15 years in a variety of industries. Her passion for driving value-based outcomes for customers is helping companies succeed in all aspects of their data management and digital transformation strategies.
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