How to Narrow Your View of the Customer

In a recent whitepaper, The Payoffs of a Single View, global marketing services firm Carlson Marketing Worldwide examines the benefits of creating a single view of your customer. Developing a real-time solution to feed a single view of your customer is the best way to stay relevant and effective for all customer-facing activities, the whitepaper advises. Below are some tips the whitepaper provides to help you accomplish this goal.

1. Update in real time. While many databases are updated monthly or quarterly and then distributed to department heads, a customer database that truly contains a single view of the customer looks a little different on a minute-to-minute basis. Real-time updating results in better coordination between sales, marketing and operations, the whitepaper notes.

2. Share your knowledge. Provide the voices of your company — your customer service reps (CSRs) — a broader view of your customer, including transactional and demographic data. This helps your agents with upsell and cross-sell opportunities. The whitepaper cites Bell Canada as an example. The telecommunications company saw its CSR sales per hour climb 18 percent and a staggering 50 percent increase in offer response rates by providing the CSRs with pertinent customer information.

3. Segment with unique identifiers. Establish a single customer database with unique identifiers to allow for customer segmentation and a more personalized customer experience, the whitepaper says. These identifiers should include customer value, recent offers made, transaction and call histories, behavioral patterns, and geographical location, among others.

4. Automate when possible. Automation goes beyond the Internet, the whitepaper points out. Automating activities at every consumer touchpoint, including call centers, unifies the marketing approach each customer will see, helping eliminate redundant offers. This approach helps enhance two-way communication between a company and its customers, creating genuine responses about customer-related activities and word-of-mouth buzz about the brand.