How a Customer Data Platform Solves Siloed Data in Your Business
The online and offline customer experiences are more intertwined than ever before. To provide a great customer experience, you must understand and orchestrate the customer journey across all channels. This challenge can be difficult to meet when online and offline data is siloed in different systems. A customer data platform (CDP) can help by syncing online and offline data. This sync allows businesses to understand their customers’ journeys better and create more personalized experiences. This article will cover online-offline customer experiences and how marketers use software to learn and develop better experiences. Thanks for reading!
The Online-Offline experience
The online-offline customer experience is not a new concept but is amplified by the current state of technology. With the advent of online shopping and the ubiquity of mobile devices, customers now move seamlessly between online and offline channels. This fast and constantly changing pace can be frustrating for businesses trying to provide a consistent customer experience across all channels. And this is something that customers demand. They like to be on most social media channels like TikTok and Instagram and drive around to different stores. So you need to be there too. The problem of siloed data again! Online data is typically stored in e-commerce systems, while offline data is stored in POS systems. You can’t easily understand the customer journey and create a cohesive customer experience as you need.
Chime in the CDP
Marketers use customer data platforms to manage their customer data. Once set up and implemented, customer data platforms are software platforms that allow businesses to collect, manage, and analyze customer data. CDPs provide a single view of the customer, which can be used to segment customers and create targeted marketing campaigns. CDPs can also help businesses understand the customer journey and create more personalized experiences.
The benefits of using a CDP include:
– A single view of the customer: CDPs provide a single view of the customer, which can be used to segment customers and create targeted marketing campaigns. A single customer view means our teams are on the same page about who this person buys from you.
– Improved customer understanding: CDPs can help businesses understand the customer journey and identify opportunities for improvement. Whether in-store or online, the software ties the segments and personas to help describe who the customer is. Some customers only purchase through your Shopify store.
– More personalized experiences: By understanding the complete customer journey, businesses can create more personalized experiences tailored to the individual. You can understand where, when, and how often a customer buys with purchase data. You can send relevant emails or texts if they prefer by working with just these nuggets of information.
CDPs unite the online-offline customer experience
A CDP can help by syncing online and offline data. This aligned information allows businesses to better understand their customers’ journeys and create more personalized in-store or online experiences. Customer loyalty campaigns are a great example because the customer needs to be rewarded with to total amount she’s purchased. Or the total amount of time he’s visited. CDPs create a single customer view and work by segmenting customers and creating targeted marketing campaigns.
Using a CDP to connect online and offline data has many benefits. These include:
Better customer service
By understanding the complete customer journey, businesses can provide better customer service by addressing issues early in the journey. CDPs can often handle real-time information shared across customer-facing teams like sales, customer success, and support, so when addressing a customer, the team has the context to help them. Mobile retailing is the ultimate example of better customer service for e-retailers.
Less customer effort
Corresponding data can help businesses reduce the effort required by customers to purchase products or services. For example, suppose a customer starts their journey online researching the fall fashion trends but completes it offline at the store after trying it on in the dressing room. In that case, the business can use data from the CDP to ensure that the offline experience is just as seamless as the online experience. When we purchase online and have the convenience of returning it to a store- that’s a customer experience with minimizing customer effort.
Higher conversions
Connecting online and offline data can help businesses increase conversion rates by providing a more personalized customer experience. For example, if a customer abandons their online shopping cart, the business can use data from the CDP to follow up with them and offer assistance. Recommendation engines are built when a store has 10,000 customers, where quantitative models can help predict if a customer is in a higher-value segment so that you can offer discounts to maintain the right engagement or suggest a subscription because it’s appropriate.
A customer data platform can be a valuable tool if you’re looking to improve your customer experience. A CDP can help you sync online and offline data, understand the customer journey and create more personalized experiences. If you’re not sure where to start, our experts can help. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you improve your customer experience.
To provide the best customer experience possible, customer experience managers must have a complete view of their customers’ interactions across all channels. The best is where online offline data syncing comes in handy. By connecting data from different sources, retailers can better understand what their customers are doing online and offline and use that information to improve their marketing and customer service strategies. Contact us today if you want more information on connecting your online and offline data or need help implementing a customer data platform into your business strategy. We’d be happy to help!
