Businesses can no longer just offer the best product or service at the best price and be done with it. Consumers are now choosing to spend their money with companies that provide the best Customer Experience. It is possible that by investing and implementing Customer Experience programs and strategies, you could potentially double your revenue in three years.

More than two-thirds (around 86%) of buyers will spend more on a product or service if it means that they are receiving an excellent and memorable Customer Experience. More than that, nearly half of people have made impulse buys because they received a personalised experience from a brand.

What is Customer Experience?

Customer Experience is sometimes simply referred to as CX. In an eCommerce setting, this could be referred to as User Experience or (IX).

In general, Customer Experience is how your customers think you are treating them. The reality is: if customers feel like ‘just a number’ to your business, your business will likely be ‘just a business’ to them. Offering tailored and personalised experiences mean customers link interactions with your brand or company with pleasant emotions and memories. This, in turn, drives their loyalty, which could generate repeat sales and lead to new acquisitions as these happy customers spread the word.

How data can be used to enhance your Customer’s Experience.

In the past, many companies used surveys to gather data on their customers’ experiences. A survey conducted by McKinsey & Company in collaboration with AlphaSights and Gerson Lehrman Group in 2019 and 2020 found that nearly all of their respondents (93%) used survey-based data to track their customer’s experience. However, only 15% thought that surveys were the best way to measure their customer’s experience. Very few (6%) believed that using surveys provides them with the data they need to make informed decisions.

Today companies have access to vast amounts of customer data. This data can be ethically sourced and combined with a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to improve your Customer Experience.

The data that is sourced and used by a Customer Data Platform is usually first party data. That means the information is gathered directly from individuals who interact with your company, business, or brand. Gathering data directly from persons who have interacted with your company means the data closely reflect your target demographic.

By harnessing this data, you can make informed decisions to improve your customers’ experience in general. More than that, a customer data platform creates profiles of individual people who have engaged with your brand. That means you can tailor marketing messages and experiences to speak directly to each specific customer. These tailored experiences make each interaction with an individual and unique customer an opportunity to provide them with a personalised and custom Customer Experience.

Customers want to be important to you. They do not want to be just another order number. So much so that they are willing to give you permission to gather their data in order to make their interactions with your brand more personalised.

What kind of data can be used to better understand your customers?

When you use data to better understand customers, it is generally referred to as Customer Analytics. This involves everything from gathering to storing, analyzing, and then making decisions from what you’ve learned from the data gathered on your customers.

When you collect information on your customers, you are primarily interested in how they interact with your different marketing channels and how they interact with your products or services. Bear in mind that every interaction with your company or brand that does not directly relate to an interaction with your product or service is a marketing interaction.

Everything from a like on Facebook to reading an article on your blog or searching the location of your brick-and-mortar store are steps along the customer journey. A journey that would potentially and hopefully end with them making a purchase from you.

Suppose you know how your target audience (or, better yet, any specific customer) prefers to interact with your company. In that case, you can generate highly targeted marketing messaging specifically aimed at that group or individual.

More than knowing how customers interact with your brand, you need to know which products or services are the most and least popular. Even then, you cannot stop there; you need to know why this is the case.

This is because products or services that are selling well could potentially do better if marketing efforts for these products or services are tweaked according to customer feedback (both directly and indirectly).

Products or services that sell less well may need to be dropped from inventory. On the other hand, harnessing your customer data and improving your Customer Experience could see these products or services selling better as they are strategically marketed to particular individuals.

In today’s marketplace, it is vital to gather and harness not only digital data but also real-life information on your customers. Real-life data could include information about their trips to your brick-and-mortar store, what they purchased, and the overall experience of their visit. It could even be as specific as what they thought of your window dressing, their interaction with your sales staff, or whether they tried any samples while at your store.

Businesses often have multiple platforms and databases where they gather information on their customers. That means they often have vast amounts of data to store, process, and analyse before they can use it in a logical and strategic way. In many cases, the data is so much that businesses only use a fraction of the data available to influence their customer’s experiences.

Using a customer data platform allows you to integrate all the first party (and sometimes second and third party) data that you gather on your customers or even potential customers. You can then use this to cultivate highly unique and personalised Customer Experiences and give your customers exactly what they want or need, when they want and need it.

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) – The CDP market is booming, and it won’t slow down any time soon. Customers are demanding more personalised interactions with brands, and brands who fail to meet these demands will likely see customers turning to their competitors.

A Customer Data Platform collects and combines personally identifiable data on individual customers. This allows companies to generate highly personalised marketing messages that convert new customers and retain existing ones.

The global customer data platform market size is predicted to reach $20.5 billion by 2027, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 34% during the forecast period.

Part of this growth can be attributed to the increasing demand for personalised interactions between consumers and brands. Another reason is the exponential growth and influx of new data that stemmed from the global pandemic as more and more consumers turned online for products, services, and offerings.

Companies that are not harnessing this massive influx of data are missing out on opportunities to connect with their customers on a more personal level. Here is what you may be missing out on if you aren’t using a Customer Data Platform:

A unified view of individual customers.

Using tools like a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system or Data Management Platform can provide valuable insights into your target audience. Still, these tools have their limitations. While the data harvested, processed, and stored by these tools is valuable and can greatly benefit your marketing efforts, it only provides you with general information on your current or prospective customers.

A Customer Data Platform aggregates all the data gathered on specific customers from their very first interaction with your company. A CDP uses AI-powered identity resolution to combine multiple identities from across various touchpoints into one unified customer profile.

All your customer data is located on a centralised platform by using a CDP. That means that there are no data silos, and companies can obtain a unified view of any particular customer within moments.

Quickly locating relevant data.

Because data is stored on a centralised platform, it can quickly and easily be retrieved. The Customer Data Platform combines data that would otherwise be stored in separate locations. Having all the data relating to any particular customer in one place means that companies would be able to draw on and utilize that information quicker and more effectively.

Companies can now have a real-time 360-degree view of unique customers and tailor marketing messages directly to those customers where and when they would have the most impact.

Most notably, companies can have transactional, behavioural, and demographic data in real-time. This could be extremely valuable in creating more targeted marketing messages that may be time-sensitive.

Creating more personalized and consistent brand messaging.

Customer Data Platforms use first party personal identifying information. This information gives companies the power to generate highly personalised content. Not only is this content personalised, but it can meet customers (or potential customers) where and when these messages could be most effective.

Information is power, and this power is amplified when it can all be combined to generate marketing messages that speak directly to unique individual customers. It is even more effective when these messages can meet your customers where and when they want it.

By harnessing the information generated by a Customer Data Platform, you not only ensure that specific clients receive tailored marketing messages. You also avoid sending irrelevant information to those customers.

Improved operational efficiency and automation.

Companies that do not have a customer data platform can still personalise and automate some aspects of their marketing campaigns. However, these features are limited if you are not using a CDP. This is not necessarily because you may not have the data (although this could also be the case). It may be because you have data spread out over different platforms.

That means you need to locate, reference, analyze, and draw actionable strategies based on data that is located on different systems. This can be highly resource-intensive, potentially slowing down your operational efficiency and automation.

Taking longer to generate insightful marketing strategies that speak to individual people means that you may miss out on opportune moments to convert customers.

Using ethically sourced data.

CDPs mostly use first party data. First party data is data collected directly from consumers who have interacted with your brand. That means you are in control of how, where, and when this information is gathered.

By regulating how you collect consumer data, you can ensure that you have obtained the proper consent to collect and use your customers’ personal (and sometimes private) information.

Although the first party data collected and aggregated through your Customer Data Platform may be ethically sourced, your company is still responsible for keeping that data safe. That means you need to have robust data security, which most Customer Data Platforms provide. More than that, most Customer Data Platforms help you stay compliant with relevant data protection laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Getting the best of both worlds.

A Customer Data Platform collects and stores data specific to individual customers and aggregates data relating to anonymous customers as they move through each step of the customer journey.

This information will allow you to target specific customers and optimize your more general customer journeys and sales funnels.

The growing demand for more personalised interactions coupled with the massive influx of customer data created the ideal scenario for companies to step up and show up consistently across multiple marketing channels. Using a CDP can not only help your brand be seen by those who are most likely to engage with it, but to do it in a manner that will make them want to engage with your brand.

If you aren’t using a CDP yet, perhaps the question you should ask yourself shouldn’t be whether you should get one, but why you haven’t gotten one yet.

Marketing that lacks real-time data and client consent are referred to as Tone Deaf SPAM, and it is not only annoying but also unlawful under GDPR and POPIA regulations. I fell in love with customer data platforms (CDP) and Next Best Action software back in 2012, when I first met Dr. Shuki Idan, he lead the SAP product group called RTOM (real-time offer management). This was a SAP product that leveraged the power of HANA and was revolutionary at the time! 

The issue we had with RTOM and later SAS IMM was that it was pretty useless without data, and while it could influence customer behavior in real-time, lowering the cost of customer acquisition and increasing the profitability of each customer interaction with the next best actions, the business case was harmed by the cost and time required to set up a data warehouse. These great applications could have been deployed in weeks, but the underlying data warehouse need would take months, if not years, to fulfill. Completion did not always imply success since the business did not trust the data. 

Then… 

The door slams open, and Microsoft’s Customer Experience Platform with Dynamics Customer Insights steps in (CI). (Imagine a scene from a cowboy film…) “Dynamics 365 Customer Insights enables businesses to combine all of their B2C and B2B customer data in real-time to provide AI-powered insights, resulting in a single view of the customer.” Marketers can use interactive reports to enhance their customers’ experiences, and AI-powered insights can help foresee customers ’ demands faster. “Dynamics 365 Customer Insights serves both technical and non-technical users seamlessly, whether it’s through a visual UI/drag and drop interface for marketers or advanced analytics for data scientists.”  Microsoft was recently named a leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Customer Data Platforms.

The IDC MarketScape said, “Consider Microsoft if you are looking for user-friendly AI/ML modeling capabilities that do not require marketers (and other LOB users) to be data scientists.” The report also noted, “Microsoft’s CDP segments are created through automated discovery powered by AI, API configuration, and visual UI/drag and drop interface for markets and through analytic/SQL queries for data scientists. Segments are updated based on a variety of factors such as streaming web session data, geolocation, and dynamic modeling and based on batch data updates.” 

What is it about Customer Insights that makes it so unique? 

1. The manner in which you ingest data using power query connectors and a common data model, which takes days or weeks rather than months or years. Power query connectors are predefined integration points for over 500 apps, and as you may be aware, integration takes time, which costs money.

2. How you unify data using AI-enabled MAP, MATCH, and MERGE (or M3 as we’ve labelled it) functionality.

3. The way you enrich the data through sources like Microsoft and other partners to gain insight to brand affinity and other interests.

4. How you use built-in AI and analytics to predict customer needs:

a. Predict customer lifetime value, transactional churn, and subscription churn using prebuilt AI models.

b. With product suggestions, use prebuilt AI models to swiftly uncover cross-sell and upsell possibilities.

c. Make your own audience segmentation or use AI-driven suggestions.

d. Use industry standards to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) or create your own bespoke KPIs.

e. Use Microsoft Power BI and Azure Synapse Analytics, a big-data-analytics service, to combine customer data with financial, operational, and unstructured Internet of Things (IoT) data.

5. How you use AI-powered insights to drive meaningful actions:

a. Intelligently orchestrate personalized journeys across destinations including marketing automation, advertising, and customer engagement platforms from Microsoft and other providers.

b. Surface up-to-date customer data and insights in the Microsoft apps that your employees use every day, like Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service.

c. Create smart, responsive, low-code bespoke apps from your customer data with Microsoft Power Apps.

6. How advanced CDP capabilities may help you personalize B2B interactions:

a. Shorten sales cycles by obtaining unified account profiles that provide actions and insights on an aggregated or individual basis.

b. Improve lead accuracy and quality by leveraging third-party enrichment sources to enrich account data from industry-leading data suppliers like Leadspace and Dun & Bradstreet.

c. Increase account retention by detecting at-risk accounts with prebuilt, customizable AI churn prediction models.

d. Use LinkedIn to boost your account-based marketing (ABM).

Last but not least…

7. The way you build customer trust on a consent-enabled CDP:

a. Enhance customer experiences in a cookie-less future to respect consumer consent and privacy without requiring any additional workflows or understanding where and how consent data is collected and managed.

b. Harmonize consent across business workflows. Count on a flexible customer data platform (CDP) with always up-to-date consent data refreshed automatically, using connections to the consent data mastering service.

c. Stay compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) by utilizing data governance capabilities enabled by Azure Purview Preview.

The more I wrote this article the more it felt like 10 things I love about you…

All of these capabilities are built on top of industry-specific data models, such as Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services’ Unified Customer Profile.  By enabling Dynamics Customer Insights, we’ve been able to unleash incredible returns for our customers – give us the chance to do the same for you! 

Wynand Roos- Managing Director, The CRM Team

Wynand is the co-founder and Managing Director of The CRM Team and has been an expert in CRM for the past fifteen years. While working for Microsoft, he was responsible for building the Dynamics CRM market and partner channel, from version 1.2 of the software. Today, he is used by Microsoft Corp. to train their sales team across the world and has extensive experience in creating developing CRM solutions using the Dynamics 365 platform.