Chapter 16
Centralized View of the Customer
For teams to make decisions closest to the customer, they need to have access to the right historical data. A centralized view of the customer is a single record for every contact. It includes each event or interaction a connection has with the organization. All contacts with the people or content from marketing, sales, service, and operations become the data archive of your organization's relationship with that person.
A centralized view of the customer allows an inbound team to have access to essential transaction data and product status. It will enable your team to develop insights into the contact's behavior, issues, interests, and needs. These data insights guide the creation of an action plan designed to engage and help each customer.
A centralized view of the customer improves your relationship because response and decision-making time are faster and more comprehensive. Interactions become personalized with individual requests and preferences, and it is easier for employees to identify previous potholes and subjects to avoid. The centralized view of the customer helps take complex information and makes it simple so the team can make decisions and take action.
When the data about your customer is in one place, you have the potential to analyze it and take action. From this comes insights into your customer's activities and personal preferences. Your customer-facing teams can be proactive, anticipating what customers might need in the future. A centralized view gives you the best chance to provide the right help at the right time to your target persona as they progress along the buyer journey.
Pete Caputa, CEO of Databox, talks about the centralized view of the customer:
Most companies are incessantly pushing their products and solutions to every prospect and customer in the same way because that's what they've always done. But, this approach is getting more and more expensive and less and less effective as buyers get accustomed to Amazon-like experiences.
In contrast, inbound organizations are leading their prospects and customers to the right spot at the right time via the right communication channels.
The goal of an inbound organization is to understand what each customer is trying to accomplish, so marketing sends the right message, sales tailors their approach, and customer service can make custom, context-aware recommendations.
Every marketing touchpoint should be personalized and targeted instead of mass-blasted. Sales must be focused on discovering and advising, instead of hounding and pitching. Service should know exactly why the customer bought and what success looks like for them instead of relying on scripted processes that end no matter what results a customer gets.
The first and last step of accomplishing this change is the creation of a centralized view of every customer, so sales, marketing, and services teams can see what each other is doing.1
Warning
How do you build a centralized view of the customer without imposing centralized control of the customer relationship and experience?
The answer lies in the way your team uses information and how it relates to your mission and culture. Centralized control can lead to overbearing processes that result in slow decision making. A centralized view of the customer accelerates decision making because it provides essential information to the employees that engage with customers on a daily basis.
By unifying the view of the customer, you empower employees to act within the culture to execute on your organization's mission. Leaders and managers should provide the right tools and automation for customer-facing employees. The creation and maintenance of the centralized view of the customer is a primary focus of the organization and must be accessible to update or modify, and user friendly.
The key is a balance. Centralize the platform and decentralize the decisions that enhance customer's experience.
How to Build a Centralized View of the Customer
To build a centralized view of the customer, start with a modern technology stack that has the basics: cloud based, easy to implement, easy to install, and easy for individuals to use. Legacy technology systems are sometimes deployed in a siloed format, based on the entrepreneurial needs of a growing company. When each department uses a different tool, it creates a disjointed process: one group may have access to the information they need, but everyone else faces barriers.
Creating a centralized view of the customer is hard. A good first step is to deploy a technology stack that unifies the marketing, sales, and service views of the customer.
Tools like HubSpot software combine all these components, including CRM, marketing automation, and service management, in one place. Each customer record is accessible by all customer-facing teams to track each interaction with each individual contact from the very first touch. This includes the first visit to your website and which pages are viewed, session times, and the last page viewed. Email sends, opens, and click-throughs are added to the contact timeline as well as meetings, phone calls, check-in calls, customer support calls, all marketing communications, sales interactions, and service requests. Qualitative and quantitative data are mapped to the buyer journey. This includes site visits, conversions, blog views, social media shares/likes, content engagement, chat, messaging, and meetings. This one centralized view allows your team to understand what they need to be successful.
A modern CRM, connected to marketing automation tools, provides important data needed to analyze buying patterns, presale behavior, responses to offers, engagement with content, personal communications with your team, and other data points from each touch with the customer.
Today, using spreadsheets and email tools to manage customer relationships puts businesses at a disadvantage. Over half of all SMBs' enterprises use manual methods, like spreadsheets and whiteboards, to keep track of customers. Tracking in this fashion is inefficient, subject to human error, and creates dangerous silos. The inability to access customer information can lead to customers that are annoyed and disappointed. They may choose to find a company considerate enough to invest in tools that give them better answers.
Everyone has had this agonizing experience: you are forced to call customer support and are handed off seven times to seven different people, and they all ask you for the same basic, but redundant, information. This signals a lack of a centralized view of the customer and is wasteful and frustrating, and puts the relationship at risk.
A centralized view of the customer allows your team to deliver a great customer experience that builds loyalty, creates brand advocacy, and grows your revenue. A recent study shows that 75% of sales managers say that using a CRM helps them increase sales, and companies who invest in a CRM generate over five times the return on their investment.2
A centralized view of the customer gives your team an important advantage to help you build deep engagement; measure, analyze, and better understand the buyer journey; and create long-term customer relationships.