A single customer view is an aggregated, consistent and holistic representation of the data known by an organization about its customers. While most businesses have been considering this strategy and working towards data integration for some time, the process is ongoing.
There are several benefits organizations see from a single customer view. A consolidated view helps with business intelligence, staff efficiency, marketing campaigns and effectiveness, collections in billing and the overall customer experience.
There are several reasons why organizations struggle to create a single view. First, many organizations house several databases, which collect unique data and are used by different departments. This siloed approach leads to duplicate database records, inconsistent data entry and less tailored customer interactions.
All of these scenarios lead to inconsistent data spread out across the organization. To leverage the information, organizations need to ensure consistent data entry across the organization, identify patterns of data errors and leverage matching technology.
Regular database maintenance needs to take place to ensure information is accurate and duplicate records are merged. This regular cleaning will help businesses achieve a single customer view and improve a variety of business processes.