Page 203 - DMGT308_CUSTOMER_RELATIONSHIP_MANAGEMENT

Customer Relationship Management

Notes So how important is it for you to have customer information shared across channels? How
important is it that all of this data is required at an individual level to deliver a consistent and
relevant experience?
Use market research where possible to understand the types of channels customers use and
whether the patterns of usage vary across different customer groups. This will help you
understand the significance of connecting up channels operationally.
Define which data is critical for success and where you will source it from. Start with your more
traditional, transactional and operational data and use this as a basis of the database requirements.
Step 3: Data

A data strategy is a critical success factor for a business, especially when considering investment
in customer relationship management. Businesses often do not have a data strategy that identifies
the key assets held in the business and where they believe there are gaps or inaccuracies, how
and whether these issues can be addressed internally, and the role that external information can
play.
Table 8.1: Key Steps and Proportion of Focus Required in Data Planning/Strategy

Step one Prioritise current data asset importance and identify missing data
Step two Deal with data quality issues
Step three Investigate data capture option
Step four Engineer value from your own data
Step five Consider value of external data overlays

Source: http://barnraisersllc.com/tag/social-crm/

Data Strategy

Start by checking out what data is held in your data warehouse and identify the most important
information you have access to and which key data are absent.
Since data warehouses often try to harmonise data assets from data silos across the business, it
is likely that data may exist at source and has the potential to be accessed, so check out source
systems.
Evaluate out data quality too. How well is your data populated? Is it cluttered with erroneous
values? What about the less obvious places you could consider for capturing useful information
about your customers? Whilst many of your customers’ interactions with you are likely to be
reasonably well structured within your own operational systems, the likelihood is that they are
interacting in other ways through digital channels which can leave valuable traces of less
structured information.

Recent innovations in ‘listening’ technology can capture and translate browsing behaviour into
more structured data, directly in real time from your web site. This would provide you with
valuable intelligence across all stages of the customer life cycle, in particular filling a gap in the
information available to you at the very early stages of engagement with customers
(i.e. pre-purchase).
Your data strategy needs to consider combining the efforts of your IT functions in assembling
and managing internal data assets with the possibilities of new data gathering technologies
focussed upon digital channels to provide valuable overlays.

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