Customer knowledge: it all starts with the Data Quality of your customer contacts
The statistics speak for themselves: nearly 30% of information in CRM databases is obsolete after one year and they have a wealth of incorrect contact data. Invalid email addresses, incorrect phone numbers, postal addresses that are not up to date… the most basic identification information that makes up the first level of your customer knowledge is nevertheless a fundamental prerequisite for carrying out personalized marketing strategies.
What is the point of knowing how to anticipate the behavior of a given segment or of knowing the appetites of your customer profiles at the tip of your fingers, if you are not able to pass on these insights through concrete actions with your contacts? Your database must provide you with the information you need to develop your marketing campaigns, starting with contactability data, the foundation of customer relations. It is only later that you will be able to enrich them with more intelligent data, to develop complex relational strategies.
To ensure the reliability of information essential to customer relations
Among your data elements, some have priority. Their reliability must be beyond doubt. First name, last name, salutation, postal address, active email address, updated landline and mobile numbers… The idea is to make sure that the person exists, that the indicated salutation is consistent with the first name entered, that they have not moved or changed phone number, and that their email address is active.
By validating this form information at the data entry stage, you will have a sound basis for establishing a lasting relationship with your customers. You will also be able to avoid the risk of fraud using an obsolete or erroneous postal address, or a prepaid mobile number. It is then a matter of intagrating real-time quality control mechanisms into the forms for this – input help, identity validation, identification via mobile, etc… – which help to authenticate your contacts in a reliable way.
The importance you place on managing the quality of your data will have a positive impact on your overall communication, with marketing campaigns addressed to the right people and on the right channel.
A unique and reconciled vision of your customers
For this approach to be effective and to guarantee continuous data quality, it is important to apply the same rules and the same rigor to each touchpoint with your customers and prospects. At the point of sale when you register them in a loyalty program, by email when you send them digital campaigns or during your mobile interactions, the data must be standardized, cross-referenced and convergent.
And even abroad! Globetrotting consumers must be able to be recognized in any country and any sales consultant must be able to fill in their customer file with standardized information. Opting, for example, for autocompletion techniques that integrate international syntax rules as soon as a form is entered, or for a clienteling application, would make the daily life of many salespeople easier. Your database will be formatted and homogeneous, avoiding divergent entries (the name of a city in one form and its postal code in another), duplicates re-entered at each interaction, and other inconsistencies.
And if your organization requires you to have several customer files, local or international, think about deduplicating them, or even checking if the recorded data is still active: an unmentioned move, an obsolete email, a closed landline or cell phone line… so much stored data that needlessly pollutes your customer knowledge and impacts the performance of your marketing actions.
Smart data VS Big Data to focus on the customer
Once your database is up to date and qualified – and only then – can you extend your customer knowledge with unstructured data. Purchasing behaviors, interactions with brands, sociological data, etc… data from the web and social networks are all useful indicators for defining marketing strategies.
However, rather than collecting them in a massive and systematic way, you need to focus on analyzing them and combining them with your existing data. Think priority and up-to-date data, a global and customer-centric approach. In a word: instead of accumulating raw, cumbersome and often unusable “Big data”, refine it into “Smart data” that speaks for itself and, above all, can be acted upon by your teams, according to clearly defined business needs.
Once again, it’s all about Data Quality. To be useful, data must be used in concrete actions: targeting, predictive analysis of customer needs, and detection of dissatisfaction to correct or refine your strategy. It must allow you to send the right messages at the right time. Coupled with your qualified contactability data, which ensures that you address the right person via the right channel, it enriches your customer knowledge and perpetuates your customer relationship.
About DQE
Because data quality is essential to customer knowledge and the construction of a lasting relationship, since 2008, DQE has provided its clients with innovative and comprehensive solutions that facilitate the collection of reliable data.
+15
Year of
expertise
+400
Clients in all
sectors
3Md
Queries per
year
+240
Internationnal
repositories
Our latest resources
April 19, 2024
Retail: Are you activating data quality management in your customer loyalty strategy?
