Fragmented data hindering a focus on customers

Trends and technology change over time, but the fundamentals of putting customers at the centre of everything you do as a business remain the same. The term ‘customer-focused’ is not just a buzzword for a company’s marketing materials. To truly deliver on that promise, leaders must invest in the processes and policies which give them a real insight into how to align their strategies with their customers’ exact needs.

 

It has been two decades since the release of Bain & Company research, which showed the chasm between the proportion of businesses that felt they were customer-centric (80%) and the mere 8% of their customers who agreed with this notion.

 

Yet despite so many years to close the gap, and the huge leap in the amount and accuracy of available data, we are still seeing decision-makers either under-utilising or totally overlooking all of this information, resulting in a fragmented customer experience.

 

If leaders focus too much on the messaging around being customer-focused rather than the reality of the work needed to achieve this aim, or simply task IT with implementing technology to reach an easy solution, then no real transformation takes place across the entire enterprise. Thus, it becomes nothing more than a topic talked about in the boardroom with no real-world impact.

 

We often see decision-makers claiming they have a 360-degree view of their customers because of their access to retrospective data. But this belief does not equal reality, as this often means using narrowly-focused historical data to underpin business strategies. This approach tends to overlook vital information from front-line staff who deal first-hand with customers’ pain points on a daily basis. And that means you still have blind spots, revenue leakage, operational friction and avoidable risk.

 

 

The impact of fragmented experiences

Companies across all sectors should look to the likes of Amazon or Apple, who set the standards that customers expect: ease of access, preferably on their mobile device while on the move. But whilst best practice can be adopted by leadership, they must go a layer deeper to ensure they have comprehensive data about their specific customers, rather than simply copying and pasting a generic formula for customer-focused success.

 

Achieving this can be uncomfortable because it forces the need for clarity and ownership. The board might not be ready to hear what customers are telling them, and this results in the numerous notorious examples of household names who refused to adapt to changing customer demands, leaving their popularity plummeting. With so much choice, customers can easily switch to a competitor – and that risk should always be at the forefront of decision makers’ minds.

 

We also see inconsistent data use across teams, resulting in incongruent messaging and poor handovers – meaning confusion, errors, and failure to deliver on promises are far more likely. Again, this translates into missed sales or upsell opportunities, and it becomes exponentially more difficult to provide a truly personalised experience. This highlights exactly why leaders must ensure customer-focused strategies are not contained to the boardroom, but are implemented and become the norm throughout the business.

 

When customers have fragmented experiences – which are at direct odds with their expectations around relevance, speed, consistency and personal understanding - that can have very real costs, like losing customers to other brands, losing the opportunity to upsell or cross-sell, higher operating costs, higher staff turnover, and reputational damage.

 

And how do we end up with fragmented customer experiences? If leaders are relying on fragmented data, that’s how. Customers may offer a second chance to a business which failed to provide a satisfactory service, but after two bad experiences, an overwhelming 86% would abandon that brand, according to Emplifi research.

 

Conversely, Salesforce reports 88% of people are more likely to purchase again after a positive customer service experience – showing the direct link between being truly customer focused and building up loyalty. Many boards are still focusing on traditional ‘number-based’ reporting where revenue and turnover are seen as the vital statistics; in fact, they should be equally, if not more, concerned with performance-related data around customer retention, complaints, and repeat purchase rates.

 

 

Knowing me, knowing you

All of these potentially harmful effects showcase exactly why businesses need to truly understand their customers: because if you don’t know them, how can you provide the service that they really want? And if you can’t do that, then why would they choose you over a competitor? Given that customer demands evolve constantly, decision-makers cannot relegate customer-focused activity to an annual meeting agenda item. Work around data-led decision making must be an ongoing process, where leaders aren’t just listening to their customers, but also looking at the current market and at future changes or trends too.

 

Building a 360-degree picture of the customer is a necessity for businesses of every size: for SMEs, growth depends on making every interaction count, and for larger organisations, this comprehensive oversight stops the silo effect that can occur when complexity creeps in during the scale-up process. In both cases, the outcome is the same when data is disconnected: the business sees only fragments of the customer, not the whole picture.

 

To develop a comprehensive strategy, questions need to be asked – and those questions include: who owns the single version of customer truth? Which strategic decisions must now be evidence-led? What legacy behaviours are we prepared to stop? And how will we know insight is changing outcomes?

 

By bringing together all of the information that matters (buying behaviour, preferences, service history, engagement patterns, communication choices, and channel interactions) into one connected view, every team within the business can stop guessing and start acting with precision, and leadership can make better decisions because of their increased visibility.

 

 

A 360-degree strategy

A lot of businesses already have the information they need to build this 360-degree picture, but it might be split across multiple places: CRM, e-commerce tools, finance systems, spreadsheets and inboxes, for example. This data segregation causes increased friction for the customer, and does not recognise data analysis as an investment in generating better results, but rather as an overhead.

 

By firstly identifying where the data lives, how to connect it together, and who has ownership of updates, companies can free this data from functional silos and ensure teams across the business are working from the same information, all of the time, and that leadership decisions are properly evidenced. All staff must understand the importance of recording accurate and up-to-date data, so that customer insight becomes a shared responsibility. And this process also needs to include eradication of duplicate or incomplete information, so there is one trusted record which acts as a single version of the truth – and continues to do so, with processes in place to ensure that inconsistencies and multiple records don’t creep back into the system.

 

Once you know that the data you have is in the right place (and only one place) and is comprehensive and being kept up to date and utilised by all teams, then it’s time to begin using it to drive real action. No longer should data simply be used retrospectively for board reports; it’s a living document which can inform smarter decisions.

 

If your unified data is not changing strategy and behaviour, you do not yet have a 360-degree customer capability – you simply have more information. And that information by itself is not enough to merit you calling yourself ‘customer focused’. Once you put it to work, using it to make informed decisions and to underpin the strategies, customer engagement and interactions of every one of your teams, then this phrase stops being jargon and starts improving customer satisfaction, loyalty and enhanced cross-team performance. And that results in a competitive advantage because you’re seeing the full picture and truly understanding who your customers are and what they want.

 

The real question for leaders is not whether they have enough data, but whether they’re willing to let that data drive decisions. 

 

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Naeem Arif is an entrepreneur, management consultant and best-selling author, who has delivered over £2bn in business transformation projects for a multitude of global corporations and SMEs

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and alexsl