How can you use customer data to create a unified customer experience?

Omni-channel unified experiences are typically data driven. This is because data is the fuel that powers AI. Award-winning unified experiences are personalised through AI. AI significantly enhances personalised customer experiences by ascertaining intent, analysing in moment customer behaviours and preferences and guiding customers to their desired outcome. AI algorithms also enable realtime customisation of services, communication and products. This results in accurate, personalised recommendations and proactive customer support, improving satisfaction and engagement. However, using AI in CX also necessitates ethical data management and respect for customer privacy to maintain trust.

Today, customer service expectations are higher than ever, while many perceive that customer service hasn't improved. A unified customer experience is a methodology that ensures every customer interaction is matched in content, functionality and cohesive branding across multiple touchpoints and channels. No matter where the customer interacts, whether through mobile App or through a human agent, the customer experience must be consistently exceptional.

Criar uma experiência unificada do cliente envolve integrar dados de várias fontes para oferecer uma experiência consistente e personalizada. Isso inclui centralizar dados, segmentar clientes, personalizar interações, automatizar marketing, oferecer suporte proativo, garantir consistência omnicanal, coletar feedback e usar análise preditiva para melhorar constantemente. Uma abordagem unificada leva à satisfação e fidelização do cliente, impulsionando o crescimento do negócio.

Unified Customer Experience (UCE) is critical to build customer loyalty, enhancing brand perception, increases retention and encourages positive word-of-mouth referrals for transactions.

A unified customer experience, will also help your employees. If as an organisation you have clear strategic goals to unify the customer experience, you will ensure to build design system, and principles, guidelines that can be understood by all the part of the org.

In my experience the more informed your team is about a customer when working with them, the better experience they will be able to offer them. Empowering your customer success team with all the information on how they are using the product, what support issues they have, previous deal negotiations, and what opportunities there are for them to expand the usage allows them to be far more effective. There is nothing worse as a customer to tell a new person the same thing you’ve told the ten who came before them. This is also a way where you can provide a lot of value to help the customer understand how they can get more out of the products they already have!

One way through which customer data can be used to create UCE is by understanding patterns of channel preferences through which customers are interacting on the platform. Along with this, if we are able to cohortize customer data into demographics and generating content based on what the customer is actually looking for across platforms, that can hold key in defining an omnichannel experience. The more customer data you collect, the easier it will be to personalize the customer journey through segmentation.

recently read an article on customer data challenges from CX Network. I will mention some of the key points below: - 63% of marketers in the UK lack a clear strategy for personalization post-cookies, and 54% have yet to establish a clear strategy for personalization using first-party cookies. -The unauthorized use of third-party cookies has led to challenges in customer experience (CX) as well as consumer trust issues. -Treasure Data’s study revealed that 51% of UK consumers intentionally withhold personal information when shopping online, using guest checkouts and “burner” email addresses as methods to protect their privacy. This reflects a significant disconnect between consumers’ desire for data privacy and the practices of businesses.

I think before being able to make sense of customer data, you need to frame the high level end to end customer journey. the framework will help you to see where you have data available and where you have gaps. from mapping the data about your customer along the journey, you will be able to identify pain point and moment of truth, this will be the essential point to design the optimal customer experience. without data, it's all about opinions and they may be representing your customers best interest. to excel at CX i'd recommend that you take data informed decision.

Contrary to what is written here, you don't need personally identifiable information to personalise the customer experience. Anonamysed data can be used to identify patterns and then applied to customers based on these patterns. This enables prospects and customers to remain unidentified and for personalised unified experiences. Joining data across multiple sources is valuable if different sources contain relevant insights or signals.

There exists a wide array of segments when it comes to categorizing customer data, encompassing various types and sources. Among the more technical classifications are structured versus unstructured data, which delineate whether the information is organized in a predefined format; earned versus first-party data, distinguishing between data received voluntarily from customers and data collected directly by a business; and solicited versus unsolicited data, which separates customer information obtained directly from customer engagement from that which is collected without explicit customer initiation. **remember: solicited and earned data imply an active role of the customer in providing that data, often associated with positive engagement.

Certain ways through which this can be achieved is firstly by gathering data from customer interactions, purchases and support inquiries. Use social sentiments to capture customer affinity towards the platform. Analyze traffic data to understand browsing patterns and behaviours. You can also use surveys and feedback forms to direclty collect preferntial inputs from customers.

A common theme within companies is, "all models are not created equally". As a result 'governance' of data is a critical element that must be implemented and continuously managed for the data to have any value. As you develop this 'governance' data flow, you need to think as a customer and as an employee. Customer concerns - why are you collecting, what are you collecting, when are you collecting, what do I get out this? Employees - who should have access, purpose for using this, benefits vs rewards. With a proper 'governance' model, you should be able to drive responsible and ethical decisions across your business.

Implement a robust Customer Data Platform (CDP) or similar systems to merge and organize data from disparate sources. Ensure data integrity, security, and compliance with regulations like GDPR.

I do not thing the Platform is necessary, you can start with a paper, or a digital paper. making the data visually readable is a design skill that may really benefit your CX team.

Leverage analytics tools and techniques (like machine learning algorithms) to derive actionable insights from the integrated data. Understand customer behaviors, preferences and pain points to tailor experiences.

Utilize insights gained to personalize marketing campaigns, product recommendations, customer service interactions, and user experiences. Employ automation and AI-driven technologies for real-time personalization.

One way is to understand and track metrics like CSAT, RR (Resolution Rates), LTV and other key retention metrics through which this can be effectively measured and governed. Ensure that there is continuous gathering and analysis of data to refine the strategies that are being driven.

Often times, in companies data are gathered around a product rather than around a customer type or a customer journey, pivoting your data to look at it from the Customer segment or customer journey perspective may help you build a more robust CX across the org. Customer listening path, as described by Bliss in her book CXO can be a start, create a board on a paper or on Miro and start inviting the different part of the org, to map their data about the customer. when you feel you are getting a hang of that practice, start looking for the right platform.