Consumers today are interacting with businesses in a truly omni-channel way. They are visiting your website, liking or disliking your social posts, chatting to your Customer Service Representative on your WhatsApp channel, and clicking on your latest email promotions. These digital interactions generate powerful data, data that can be used to enhance customer experience (CX). According to Forbes, Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers. Continuous customer experience improvement is at the heart of many successful organizations.

Data Unification – a Holistic View of Customers

With a humongous amount of data at hand, the challenge is: how can I organize all these data in a unified way, so it can tell a story about our customers, and influence the way we do business? Data unification is the key. Sure, we are measuring email opens and click through rate, monitoring website traffic and social media performance. But too often, companies are analyzing data in channel silos, which cannot provide a holistic view of all the customer’s digital interactions. We know part of the customer’s story, but not the whole story.

What is a CDP? How can it Improve Your Business Performance?

Customer Data Platform (CDP) can help to unify customer data. Explaining how CDP works can get a bit technical. In a laymen’s term, we understand CDP as a platform that collects all the digital customer activity data from multiple channels (most common channels are website, email marketing, social media), and stitches this data under a single customer profile. Below we will demonstrate, through the experience of a typical consumer, how a well-executed CDP solution can improve customer experience and business performance.

How do CDPs Work – an Example

Profile: Rachael Collins, 39 years old working mother with two daughters, British expat living in Hong Kong.

Rachael and her husband recently purchased their 1st apartment in Hong Kong and is in the process of renovating the apartment, which will take approximately 3 months. The family decided that they want to replace some of their old electronic appliances and buy some new ones as well.

On Day 1, Rachael started to search for ‘fridges’ on Google, and clicked on an ad placed by X Electronics, a well-known Electronics Goods Chain. While at the X Electronics’ website, Rachael also browsed a few other products including microwaves and vacuum cleaners. X Electronics’ CDP platform collected all these data and stitched them against a single customer profile. At this stage, Rachael is only known to the CDP as an anonymous user with a unique ID. Based on the products Rachael has browsed, the CDP placed Rachael in the ‘Medium potential customer with multiple product interests’ Segment.

The CDP started pushing more Display Ads to Rachael with the latest promotions on fridges, microwaves, and vacuum cleaners (products which Rachael has looked at). As they are relevant, Rachael clicked on these ads and visited X Electronics’ website again, where she browsed even more products including TV, stereo systems, washing machines. Their new apartment is significantly larger than their current one and Rachael wants it all! She also signed up to receive X Electronics email newsletter.

Based on Rachael’s latest digital footprints, the CDP then promoted Rachael into the ‘High potential customer with bundle sale opportunity’ Segment. As Rachael has previously submitted her email address when she signed up to receive the newsletter, the CDP then triggered an automated email to Rachael with a promotional offer “buy $20,000 or more and get a 10% discount”. The offer was appealing to Rachael as she was planning to buy several new electronic appliances for her new apartment. After some price comparison, Rachael decided that the bundle buy offer from X Electronics offered the best deal and decided to go ahead with the purchase.

Rachael’s positive customer experience with X Electronics demonstrates how today’s consumers will respond positively to companies that can respond to “customer moments of truth” with a personalized message tailored to the customer’s unique needs.

At YouFind, we’ve developed Digital Footprint Intelligence (DFI), our very own CDP to provide our clients with a unified view of their customers’ behavior and enable targeted customer communications. To find out more about YouFind’s CDP, click here to speak to one of the consultants.