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King of queens

The customer is king, and a single view of the customer is where the magic happens.

Eamon McCann
By Eamon McCann, technical executive at Argility.
Johannesburg, 28 Oct 2016

One prize, one goal, one golden glance of... the customer. The single customer view - it's a kind of magic.

In the words of the immortal Queen hit song - it is a kind of magic, namely, acquiring a bird's eye view of customers. This is a major goal for businesses operating in today's digital world.

What does that mean?

In a multi-channel world, omni-channel capability is vital in order to pull everything together and enhance competitiveness. Businesses need one view of the customer: data; purchasing patterns; likes; dislikes; interests - only with this can the business deliver what the customer is interested in seeing, and on the customer's preferred communication platform. Lessons learned in the retail sector can assist companies in any industry looking to come to grips with the multi-channel business.

Businesses have been talking about the need to obtain a single view of their customers for years, but many have found achieving it challenging. They haven't been helped by the fact that many continue to operate in mutually exclusive silos. This is a structure that is replicated in their systems and data architecture.

However, obtaining a single view of the customer is now a business imperative.

One of the big game-changers has been the massive growth in mobility, which can be attributed to a number of factors, including the emergence of more affordable smartphones and less costly, sometimes open, connectivity - leading to greater consumer uptake.

Virtual vault

Evidence is growing that smartphones are allowing emerging markets to leapfrog the digital divide, and Internet access will increasingly be obtained via mobile wireless devices rather than PCs physically connected to networks.

In other words, there is a growing market that is becoming more 'digitally included', and companies can even opt to no longer own all the channels through which they interact with customers. Additionally, customers across industries are using multiple channels interchangeably, both in the digital and real world. Aligned with this, customers want the same experience across all these channels and they can be quick to desert companies that cannot offer them what they want.

Modern businesses are competing like never before.

This accessibility allows a competitor to be only a click away, and social media offers an instantly visible platform for highlighting both exceptional and disappointing service. Modern businesses are competing like never before, and new entrants, unburdened with legacy systems and mind-sets, are disrupting established markets.

Toe the line

Customer demand is exerting a powerful push on the drive to consolidate information across channels, while competition, especially from start-ups or companies outside an industry, is an equally potent push factor. Compliance requirements are also contributing to the need for information consolidation. One such example is the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme, which mandated that financial services companies must create and maintain an accurate view of each customer. The new regulations were designed to ensure these institutions would be able to see what each customer's total obligations to them are in order to prevent the irresponsible lending that underlay the 2008 financial crisis.

This all validates the fact that information is emerging as one of the most valuable corporate assets, and thus worthy of protection. Personal data is receiving regulatory protection now, which infers that companies will need to know what personal information they are holding, where it is and how it's managed.

Therefore, a single view of each customer is a practical way of achieving these compliance requirements, for example, implications aligned with the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act, signed into law in SA in 2013.

POPI obligations include:

* Only collecting information that is needed for a specific purpose;
* Applying reasonable security measures to protect it;
* Ensuring it is relevant and up to date;
* Only holding as much as is needed, and only for as long as it is needed; and
* Allowing the subject of the information to see it on request.

Retail has been at the coalface for much of the development of today's digital business environment and was an early adopter of the concept of multiple customer engagement channels, as was the empowered consumer demanding a uniform experience across all channels. These customers are essentially demanding a single view of the company, which is in parallel with the company's need to obtain a single view of its customer in order to meet service expectations. The latter is essential for improving the overall customer experience and enabling a drive towards greater synergy and interaction across channels. This, in turn, reduces costs and enhances efficiency.

Not surprisingly, there have been some innovative solutions to this proliferation of customer data across channels and organisational silos emerging from the retail industry. In the end, the challenge of customer data and how to manage it is common to many industries, as is the way to consolidate the information from all channels into a single omni-channel platform. This will create a powerful capability towards serving customers better, improving experiences that translate to retention, and so driving enhanced efficiencies and competitiveness.

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