If you own or plan to start a business, you've probably got advice like "manage your data effectively" and "focus on your customers more" multiple times. However, suppose you believe that there is excessive hype surrounding data management and customer relationships. In that case, it is time to learn how data management and customer satisfaction are related and how you can use them to help your business succeed.

It is necessary to win your customers, whether through a marketing campaign or a customer service call. However, impressing your customer is not easy! There is a lot of customer data generated in this digital business world. You must know every minor detail about your customers, including their interests and pain points, to analyze them on the fly and deliver relevant solutions to them.

To accomplish this, every team in your organization must work together effectively. You can hit the jackpot in your business by implementing a customer-centric business strategy with effective data management solutions.

Why Do You Need A Customer-centric Approach?

 
Customers have many options for comparing and purchasing products in today's digital business world. To be the customer's first choice, you must first understand them, know what they expect from your product or service, and promptly resolve them. Customers are willing to switch brands in a heartbeat if they believe that you don't listen to their needs, even if you have an exceptional brand value.

According to research by  Deloitte and Touche, organizations that take a customer-centric approach are 60% more rewarding than companies that do not focus on the customer. So, what is a customer-centric strategy? It is nothing but putting your customers first, understanding what they want, and providing the best solution. Adopting a customer-centric culture is challenging, but it will be well worth it. 

If you have a customer-centric business culture, ask yourself these questions to see if you are on the right track.

Data Management's Role In Customer-centric Strategy?

 
You may be wondering why, if customer-centricity can increase profit and goodwill, companies aren't implementing it. The short answer is that most businesses attempt to be customer-centric but fail to achieve it. Nonetheless, the challenge is that almost all customer data comes from multiple touchpoints and lacks consistency and governance across departments.

According to a Harvard Business Review article, merely 3% of the organization's data was high-quality data. The poor and outdated data are nothing more than mere numbers. To effectively deliver customer-centric experiences, organizations should do everything from collecting relevant customer data to enriching, standardizing, and making it available immediately to everyone in the organization.

Doing all of this manually in an organization takes time and money while also error-prone. With automated data management solutions, you can power your end-to-end customer data management while focusing on increasing customer lifetime value and decreasing churn.

How Data Management Solutions Benefit Customer-centric Strategy

 
Data management has evolved from simply collecting data to analyzing and storing it to be easily tracked and accessed. Here are some of the capabilities of data management solutions.

Track and access your data

 
Customer data is collected across multiple departments and stored in different databases. The first step toward achieving a customer-centric culture is learning about the customer data you've extracted, where it's stored, what category the information belongs to, who collected it, etc. If you plan to do this manually, you are in dire straits!

Automatically identifying and categorizing data with meta tags allows you to quickly determine who, when, where, about the data, and how your customer's data correlates. When your manager asks you to retrieve multiple datasets about your customers, you should not worry about the difficult task ahead. You can get the data in minutes with the right solution. It is not an option to implement an effective metadata management solution. It is a must-have to save time and manual labor in today's digital business world.
 
 

Check and enrich the data quality

 
The following step ensures that the data is clean and up to date. Data quality and enrichment ensure that the information is clean, deduplicated, error-free, and enriched. The term "data quality" has become a buzzword. Everyone is talking about data quality, and everyone wants to achieve 100 percent data quality. Is data quality necessary for attaining and maintaining customer-centricity? YES, it is crucial!

The right customer approach begins with accurate data. With precise customer data, you can quickly identify market trends, customer patterns, and send the right message to the right person, reducing costs on unnecessary campaigns and increasing customer lifetime value. According to a Harvard Business Review, rising customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25 percent to 95 percent. An AI-powered data quality solution automates the process of profiling, cleaning, and enriching data in real-time, allowing you to achieve data-driven insights and increase customer retention rates effectively.

Integrate and store data seamlessly

 
Once you have clean and enriched data, the next step is to ensure that everyone in the organization, across departments, has access to it through multiple channels. Defining, managing, and consolidating all available customer data is critical to creating the golden record or a single version of the truth about your customer. A data integration solution is your best bet for gathering customer data, transforming it into a standard format, and storing it in a centralized location like a data warehouse or data lake.

Data integration provides you with a complete picture of all your customer data. For example, if the sales department has a clear understanding of all the data about the customer, he will be able to make quick and wise product recommendations. A solid data integration solution allows you to seamlessly integrate all of your data at the drop of a hat, providing you with a unified view of your customer-centric data.
 
 

Explore data management solutions to achieve customer-centricity

 
Creating a customer-centric strategy in your organization is difficult, but it is worthwhile. Knowing your customers and responding quickly to their needs is critical to retaining them and maximizing your market value.

If you're struggling to find and manage your customers' data to achieve customer-centricity, it's time to start using data management solutions. Intelligent and robust data management solutions like Xtract.io, Informatica, Talend, and others will handle all of your customer data in a few clicks, protect your privacy, and assist you in gaining innovative business insights.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section so that we can start some interesting conversation!

 
 
Abinaya Sundarraj works as a marketing consultant at Xtract.io, a data solutions company. She is a passionate reader who enjoys writing about the power of data in various industries. She believes that the universe provides everything for those who genuinely desire it.