Mastering customer data - data quality
Part 2 of the "Mastering customer data" series
In Part 1 "Mastering customer data - achieving satisfied customers with a 360° view", we already told you about the challenges of data management and data quality. While data management refers to the actual storage and processing of data in a system, data quality is about the completeness and accuracy of data records and attributes. In Part 2, we will show you how you can master both with one solution and thus stay one step ahead of your customers.
Insufficient data quality - how not to lose your customers
Data quality also plays an essential role in data management. Poor data quality can be both amusing and annoying. When Starbucks employees address customers by the wrong name, it is often perceived as funny, while an incorrect address in the newsletter comes across as unprofessional. However, if a parcel is not delivered because the wrong house number was given to the company, your customer will certainly be annoyed. From the customer's point of view, it doesn't matter who is to blame for the incorrect data. What is important for the customer is whether they have received their parcel without any problems or whether they now have to make an additional effort and actively collect their parcel themselves.
However, it is not only customer satisfaction that is affected by inadequate data quality, but also your costs and efforts. One example of this is returns from marketing campaigns such as mailings. The erroneous returns have to be sorted out manually and the data updated. In addition, the pro rata production costs must also be taken into account, as well as costs if information on advertising bans is not up to date - this can be really expensive under certain circumstances.
But what all counts as customer data?
Customer data includes personal data such as name, address, telephone number, email address, company affiliation and position as well as tracking data such as purchase volume, time or data on the course of conversations and the customer's interests. For example, if your sales department has just spoken to Mrs Musterfrau from company XY on the phone because she is interested in a new product. Both the information about how long company XY has been a customer and which products or services they use are recorded and support your sales team in providing the best possible advice to the customer.
As the number of channels through which customers can contact the company increases in addition to the different types of data, the likelihood of making mistakes is also higher. Another challenge is that although there is often data on a customer, it cannot be clearly linked to one another. There is therefore no common key. Typing errors in the name, email address or postal address make this even more difficult.
Classic problems in the processing of customer data are
- Incomplete or missing data
- Outdated data or
- Incorrect data
These errors in turn cause additional work and costs for you and your team. Keeping data up to date and compliant with data protection regulations is an important and valuable task that can save you many worries in the subsequent sales process.
2 challenges, 1 solution
As you have already read, poor data quality and management can have a negative impact on both you as a company and your customers. Additional costs and effort for collecting or updating data, poor customer loyalty or a negative customer experience can be the result of poor customer data management.
To improve the quality and management of your data, you can manage your data centrally and digitally with a software solution. A solution such as Customer Insights can support you in consolidating the data and thus enable cross-departmental collaboration. This allows you to access a 360-degree profile of your customers.
Based on the information collected, marketing and sales can gain important insights into the needs and characteristics of the target group and plan targeted measures on this basis. You can save resources and at the same time optimise your customers' customer experience, thereby increasing customer satisfaction in the long term.
Your benefits from centralised customer data management
- The information collected about your customers and prospects gives you an insight into the needs and wishes of your target group, allowing you to create targeted marketing measures.
- Personalised measures strengthen the bond with your customers.
- You can use the customer data to uncover optimisation potential along the customer journey.
- You can use the collected data to improve your service and thus increase customer satisfaction.
- Feedback on your products and services allows you to continuously develop your solutions.
As digitalisation experts, we recommend the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights software solution for this purpose. As the name suggests, the software helps you to gain insights into your customer groups and the level of engagement shown. The AI-powered solution generates insights in real time and helps you to better understand customer behaviour with the help of digital and cross-channel analyses. Thanks to the seamless integration with your existing Dynamics 365 sales and/or marketing solution, you can easily reuse the segments (target groups) generated in Customer Insights in your existing sales/marketing applications.
Our conclusion
Centralised and digital customer management allows you to work flexibly and across departments. The departments in your company can easily benefit from information that has already been collected and thus plan future measures in a more targeted manner. With a software solution such as Customer Insights from Microsoft Dynamics 365, you can optimise your customer experience and gain a 360° overview of your customers thanks to AI support.
With a standardised solution, you can exploit departmental synergies and master the challenges of good data management and stable data quality.
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