In an ideal world, your company has pristine customer data. You know exactly where to find the right contact email, when you became a customer and who on your team last spoke to you. Your data is segmented, current and reliable.
But if that’s not a reality for you just yet, don’t worry … you are certainly not alone.
It’s all too easy for customer data to get lost in chaos, especially if your business uses multiple apps, as most do.
But even if your data is messed up, it’s possible to organize it – and easier than you might think.
In this way, you can keep your customer data up-to-date and reliable, even if you use multiple apps.
Why is customer data management so important?
If your customer data is messed up, you are likely to encounter these frustrations:
- Data silos or information that only certain people have access to
- Conflicting data in different apps (or the same app) so you can’t tell what is exactly or what is reliable
- Bad customer experiences as you lack the data and insights to personalize interactions
The truth is, organizing your customer data isn’t just about making your life easier (although it does, too).
Your customers want an integrated experience when interacting with your company, regardless of who they are speaking to or in which department. 87% of customers think brands need to put more effort into delivering a consistent experience.
This becomes more important to focus on considering all the different touchpoints in your organization. A customer can interact with sales, marketing, customer support, technical support, administration, and billing. And for a good customer experience, they should get quick answers to their problems and not have to repeat their story to other people over and over again.
They want to be treated like a person rather than a message or a support ticket number, and you can’t achieve this if you don’t have the data to tell you who they are and how they previously interacted with your company to have.
Where customer data lives
You are currently storing customer data in several places in your company. This could be your:
When these systems are isolated or information is separate from your other apps and inaccessible to other people, you risk data silos, inconsistent data, and poor customer experiences.
For the most seamless customer data management possible, your apps need to communicate data in two directions in a language that each app understands.
Customer data management best practices
1. Have clean and accurate data ready in every app.
All of your customer data is the sum of its parts, so it’s important to keep the data in every app up-to-date and reliable. Here is our advice on cleaning up your customer data, including removing duplicates and outdated information.
2. Use segmentation for clear organization.
Segmenting your customer data in each app is a powerful best practice. One of the main reasons for doing this is so that you can deliver a fantastic customer experience that increases satisfaction and reduces churn. And a 10% increase in a company’s customer satisfaction leads to a 12% increase in customer trust.
If you know your customer belongs to US-based segments, is subscribed to your Premium plan, and is paying for your digital marketing add-on, you can use automation to send them personalized experiences and messages.
You can also use segmentation in your data integration strategy by synchronizing the labels, tags, groups, and list memberships across your main apps on your stack.
3. Synchronize data in two ways.
There are several ways to connect your data between apps. You can use built-in native integrations offered by your software vendors or you can use trigger-action automation like the one Zapier enables.
However, when it comes to your customer data, two-way sync is your best bet. This mirrors data between two apps and updates one as soon as something changes in the other.
It’s the most reliable way to make your data easily accessible to all of your teams across your app stack.
4. Keep it simple.
As with many things in life and work, the most effective customer data management is simple. This can mean:
- Standardization of data organization: For example, a property for “Industry” instead of overlapping properties for “Industry”, “Business Type”, and “Industry”.
- Decide which data to synchronize: Instead of syncing everything, you can sync relevant and insightful data that enriches any app rather than adding unnecessary complexity.
- Create clear processes and documentation: For adding, editing, and viewing customer data to make life easier for you and your co-workers.
With bidirectional data synchronization between the apps that contain your customer data, you can give your team access to current and correct customer data anywhere and offer a five-star customer experience.