Document Projects. Marketing & Customer Communications Management

Customer Data Integration. How CDI drives the customer communication process October 15, 2008

Customer Data Management and integration is in many ways the cornerstone of a companies customer communications management approach. It is the difference between a sloppy and inefficient set of processes and one which serves the organisation well, giving the business more for less.

The acquisition of data may come from multiple systems. Much is said in respect of the “Relationship Statement”, a consolidated presentation of all of a customers product relationships. Bad data management could result in you only ever presenting half of the ‘relationship’.

For smart customer communications and the data that drives them, there needs to be commitment. Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and IT all need to get involved and work closely together.

The impact of poor data in the context of customer communications management can strike in many ways. The customer ‘conversation’ may become irrelevant and this may impact key performance measures in respect of customer retention, share of wallet and so on. It may result in a company sending confusing messages to customers across different communication channels. This is points to a need for a centralised approach to data management. It also suggests that this is an area where a Service Oriented Architecture has real merit.

Equally serious is the sheer volume of mail that goes to recipients that do not reside at the address. This is quite simply a waste of resource. Its treatment is at the down stream elements of the customer communications process. The treatment should be applied either pre-document composition whilst the data remains data or as part of postal hygiene steps at the composition or print stream engineering stage of document creation, it is important to use the available hygiene files available comercially.

An organisation takes in data from many different sources. Customer service may take address change notification over the phone. Customers may go into branches and change there information. They may change their information on the internet or at a point of sale location.

With so many sources of data the key is to try and maintain a standard. Good data quality tools will allow the creation of these standards across the enterprise and across inbound information channels. As a customer service representative makes changes at the clients instruction, the address can be validated against mail operator approved postal data and only an approved address can be entered into the database. That same service can also be integrated into the internet channels, and at retail locations.

Ah, but from here stems another problem, a customer walks into a store and makes an enquiry. He then goes home does some internet research and enters his data into the website. Later he makes his order by telephoning the call centre sales operation, his data is recorded once more. No we have duplicates across company systems. THis is where Customer Data Integration comes in. A process for deduplication can be established and we can avoid the potential of delivering any number of mail pieces to a single customer.

THe key with data quality is to persist. It is essential that a company persists at both upstream and downstream processes.

There must be data quality management processes both in front office and back office operations. It takes a considerable will for a company to effectively manage its data and it is a process whereby the ball simply should not be dropped – ever.