Three Ways to Make the Most of Your CRM Data

CRM data—nearly every company has it, but many struggle to effectively leverage it. As customers jump between channels, businesses require the ability to pull actionable insights from customer data that’s scattered across point-of-sale (POS) systems, websites, social media, mobile messaging, and more.

While there isn’t a silver bullet to address these challenges, here are three steps for capitalizing on your CRM data to deliver the best possible customer experience.
 
1. Have a Plan

Most business leaders understand the importance of breaking down data silos to get a comprehensive view of the customer. However, many companies lack a strategy to guide those efforts. 

Before implementing a CRM solution, establish the goals of your organization’s customer data strategy. In what ways do you want to improve customer experience and what data is required to do so? Additionally, determine what role CRM data will play in helping the company achieve its goals.
 
2. Connect Your Customer Data

Customer data often resides in many different systems and can be pulled into your CRM or combined with your CRM data to provide valuable customer insights. For example, combining CRM data like purchase history with voice-of-the-customer data can reveal the true sentiment of valued customers. Connecting these insights with demographic data can uncover other insights as well. 

It’s also beneficial to use customer data across organizational functions such as marketing, sales, and customer care.
 
For instance, marketers can use a blend of CRM, VoC, and demographic data to more accurately target customers via profiles or segments. Marketers can send customers relevant offers based on their purchase patterns or feedback shared from similar customers who have purchased comparable products or services. Meanwhile, customer care executives can also begin to identify upstream marketing and sales challenges by combining customer call data with VoC data.  Every business wants to know who its customers are, how much they’re spending, which products and services they’ve purchased, and their level of satisfaction. The combination of just a few data sets can shed light on these issues and enable organizations to deliver better experiences to its customers.
 
3. Respect Your Customers’ Data

Companies also need to strike the right balance between collecting customer data and using it to deliver better experiences while respecting the customer’s sense of privacy. For instance, some customers may not appreciate receiving an alert to reorder medication or other merchandise in a medium that’s visible to others. In an era of data breaches and stolen identities, it’s critical to protect customer data. Data protection plays a vital role in the customer experience and customer trust, making it crucial that companies employ protective measures to safeguard customer data such as data encryption, two-factor authentication, and controlling employee access to data.

It’s no secret that CRM data can help companies gain a 360-degree view of their customers. The challenge is using it across channels in a confidential manner to gain actionable insights into your customers’ needs and preferences. Those companies that are able to strike this balance position themselves to deliver better customer experiences and gain a competitive edge.


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