A significant part of succeeding as a business is figuring out what your customers want and then finding a way to deliver it to them in a way that also helps your company make money. This process becomes easier, the more you know about your customers. That’s why many companies have begun to embrace the idea that having a 360-degree customer view can help them achieve their goals.
What is a 360-Degree Customer View?
In the simplest terms, 360 degrees refers to having a full-circle view, meaning you can see everything around. When it comes to your business and its customers, having a 360-degree view means that you have a complete picture of every customer.
In an ideal world, there would be no missing data or blind spots. While this is a lot to ask, many companies can get close thanks to the sheer volume of data available. The trick is bringing all of that information together in one location to make it useful to your business.
What Information Does a 360-Degree View Provide?
Many businesses would be shocked at the customer insights they can collect from the data they already possess. There’s a good chance that you have access to information about each customer’s past, present, and future relationship with your brand.
The past is simple enough. You can pull up history relative to a customer’s:
- Searches and views on your website
- Interactions with your brand across all channels
- Purchase history
- Service activity
In the present, you can pull up data on each customer to help you make business decisions. Where are they in the buying cycle? How should you frame a response or follow-up? Likewise, the data you have can influence your future relationship with customers. For example, are there cross-selling or upselling opportunities there?
Why Prioritizing a 360-Degree Customer View is Vital
While every company should respect the privacy of its customers, more consumers today are placing priority on the customer experience. In other words, people want personalization and are willing to pay for it.
And the data you have at your fingertips gives you the tools your company needs to find out what each customer wants so that you can deliver it to them – sometimes before they even ask or know they want it themselves.
Why has discussion of how to know your customer grown so quickly among today’s leading sales organizations? According to Salesforce, one of the company’s biggest drivers of success and core values is “giving customers what they want, when they want, and on their preferred channel.”
Ways Your Company Can Achieve a 360-Degree Customer View
So, how can your company begin to consolidate all of that available data about its customers for a 360-degree view? Here are some tools and methods that can help you achieve a more complete customer view.
Social Listening Tools
Social media provides companies with one of the best ways to learn about customer wants, needs, and behavior. Some of the tools you can use include:
- Hootsuite – This platform allows you to manage social media accounts, but also gives you tools to monitor mentions of your brand in real-time.
- Mention – You can also monitor mentions with this tool, as well as keep track of competitors and use the platform’s powerful analytics.
- Keyhole – Use this tool to track industry and brand-specific keywords and hashtags across the internet.
Overlap Data
You can better align across every department of your business if you tie each customer interaction to a business goal. For example, customer satisfaction scores impact many areas of the business, from web design to sales to service and more. The more data you collect on customer touchpoints, the easier it will be to tie each interaction to business goals.
Data Audit
Many businesses have so much data that it has become a challenge to keep it organized and useful. Companies should create specific processes to create, store, and use data consistently so that it remains valuable and shareable across every department.
The idea of a 360-degree customer view has been floating around for several years, but more and more companies have continued to embrace the concept. There is now more data than ever available to your business and increasing ways to leverage that information. While it may not be easy, the steps your business takes to further understand its customers will help it achieve more of its financial and strategic goals.
