Solving Customer Data Problems With MDM–Find Out How At The Customer Data Forum

Via Informatica Perspectives Blog

Have you ever received an offer from a company for a product you already own? How about two identical offers for the same product… or even three offers? It’s not uncommon. With all the great applications for campaign management and customer relationship management (CRM) that companies have implemented, how do these costly mistakes keep happening?

The problem isn’t the applications—it’s the customer data they use. In many organizations, customer data is contradictory and incomplete across multiple systems. One reason is that when you made a purchase, you might have entered the name “John” for shipping information, and “Jonathan” for billing.

Customers change their personal and professional addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and other identifying data that companies use to make cross-sell and up-sell offers. Customer data inconsistency can become a nightmare for the company, and most organizations lack the processes and technology needed to empower customer-facing teams such as marketing, sales and customer service with a complete and trusted customer view, which is an essential ingredient to attracting and retaining customers.

This lack of customer data integration means that marketing doesn’t have an accurate customer list for segmentation. They’re unable to send the right offer to the right person at the right time because they can’t be sure which customers have purchased which products and services. They end up wasting time, budget and opportunities.

There’s another cost that’s much harder to measure. If you receive two identical offers for a product or service you already purchased, you probably think the company doesn’t have its act together. You might be tempted to look at an alternative provider. A company that doesn’t have its customer data in order risks damage to its brand reputation and credibility (especially with the increased use of social media to share bad experiences).

Add in the high costs to sales and customer service, and bad customer data amounts to a huge impediment that hinders a company’s ability to attract and retain customers and puts a drag on the top and bottom line.

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