Blog

Author: Matti Pylväs / Sales Executive
Date: 2021-09-24

Single Customer View: Why this Matters in Customer Data Platforms

Customer Data Platforms (CDP) have become increasingly popular in marketing and customer-centric companies. CDPs are an all-inclusive platform that integrates data from your customer base, both online and offline, to provide a single view of the customer across channels. This includes everything from their geographical location to what social media networks they use most often! With this information at your fingertips, you can make better decisions about how best to communicate with them and what promotions would be most beneficial.

But there's one issue: not every company has the same data resources. In fact, many don't even realise that such a thing as Customer Data Platforms exists or understand why it matters so much. 

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a single repository of customer information that can be used to segment and personalise marketing campaigns for improved engagement or integrated with other technologies like CRMs and analytics suites in order to create personalised experiences for customers across channels.

The Single Customer View (SCV) is an essential concept in CDPs. We are going to discuss the benefits of an SCV and why you should be concerned or interested in this idea.

Single Customer View (SCV), also referred to as a “Golden Record” or “360-degree Customer View”, is the process of collecting data from disparate online and offline data sources, then matching and merging it to form a single, accurate record for each customer.

An accurate Single Customer View is much more than just a customer database - it's scalable, flexible, and updated in real-time. The last point of SCV data being used for segmentation makes all the difference. If your system isn't up to date with current information, you may be marketing to outdated customers who could see irrelevant messages or no longer exist. Despite these benefits, many companies still carry out their single view as though they're updating on an ad hoc basis. Building a single customer view should be one of their top priorities to remain competitive against other brands.

Benefit 1: Improved customer engagement

Benefit 2: Improved customer retention and CRM data

Benefit 3: Customer satisfaction through personalisation

Benefit 4: increased revenue by targeting customer segments

Benefit 5: SCV provides a clearer picture of the customer journey and their interactions with your business.

Reasons to be interested in Single Customer View are many. Still, if you want your data to be truly accurate, flexible, scalable, and updated in real-time, this is an absolute must to build an understanding of your customer base.

A single customer view is a process that cleanses, matches, and merges data fragments into a single source of truth. So now you'll be able to access the customer data you need to understand your customers completely.

A Single Customer View is a collection of customer data that is often found in CRM and Data Management Platforms but can also be collected manually. A single customer view should contain information including name, address, email, telephone number and demographic details such as age group or occupation. For a CDP to be successful, all these customer contacts should be pulled together in one place and analysed for insights so that an updated profile can be created. This data can come from many sources, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM), website, Point-of-Sales (POS), in-store services, eCommerce platforms and more.

How is a Single Customer View Different from a Data Warehouse?

Data warehouses usually are a central storehouse for data, whereas the Single Customer View is more about using data to pursue an individual customer objective. The primary difference between a Data Warehouse and a Single Customer View is that Data Warehouses store unstructured data to identify patterns in trends. In contrast, Single Customer View stores structured data so that it's easier to convert information into actionable business insights. Single Customer View is a unified view of data that can be used to provide insights into what the customers want.

Another difference is the volume of data within a Data Warehouse. IT managers in large companies are often required to manage the Data Warehouse. Due to its size and complexity, it can be accessed by multiple departments within a company, containing data from different sources. 

The data consolidated in a single customer view can be structured to meet marketers’ needs instead of sales or finance departments. With a single customer view, you can bring together all of your data sources and merge duplicate customer records to enhance it with additional third-party data to fill the gaps in your records.

With a single customer view, CDPs can provide enhanced accuracy and intelligence. There is more insight into customer segments for relevant, personalised marketing campaigns.

The customer journey is also better understood with a single customer view.

It’s not just for CDP platforms, either. For example, single personalised customer views can be used to develop more vital organisational collaboration between your marketing, sales and finance teams by providing them with the data they need to do their jobs more effectively. 

For example, marketers can see what deals are being closed, while finance teams can understand customer lifetime value and the marketing team’s ROI.

We understand the challenges in bringing together a wide variety of customer data, making sense of it and finally building an accurate organisational Single Customer View.

CDPs can orchestrate disparate datasets from a single centralised location through a user-friendly business interface, making relevant insights available without IT involvement.

Our customer data platform services will take care of integrating all relevant data sources so you can focus on delivering business value.

Contact us today if you are interested in learning more or getting started.

Comments are most welcome and appreciated