From data to insight: Building a 360-degree customer view

Five core benefits:

1. Holistic customer profiles. Consolidates all customer information into a single, accessible CRM profile, providing a comprehensive understanding of each customer and enhancing interaction efficiency.

2. Predictive insights. Integrating and analyzing detailed customer data allows businesses to anticipate future behaviors and preferences, leading to more effective segmentation and targeted marketing strategies.

3. Tailored interactions. With complete customer profiles, businesses can offer personalized interactions and customized offers.

4. Better customer experience. A unified customer view prevents customers from repeating information, streamlines service interactions, and improves overall customer satisfaction.

5. Cross-channel consistency. Seamlessly manage conversations across various channels, support data-driven decisions, and ensure consistent and coherent communication.

A comprehensive understanding of the customer is essential for a truly customer-focused approach. Integrating information from various touchpoints — including CRM systems, social media, support tickets, and purchase histories — helps create a unified profile that uncovers customer preferences, behaviors, and challenges.

Consider a customer who frequently looks at eco-friendly products without making a purchase. Sending personalized offers and updates about sustainable products becomes possible. When they seek support, an awareness of their preferences ensures you can offer tailored solutions, enhancing their experience.

This holistic perspective enables businesses to anticipate customer needs, proactively address concerns, and deliver personalized interactions.

“Transform reactive customer service into personalized and proactive engagement to foster satisfaction and loyalty. Proactive engagement offers the added benefit of reducing contact center volume, by solving customer problems before they become a spike on your inbound channels.”

— Wendy Mikkelsen, Senior Product Marketing Director - Digital Contact Center

1. Touchpoints and data integration. Blending CRM data with social media insights and other touchpoints helps companies understand customer discussions about their brand online. This comprehensive integration allows service agents and marketing teams to deliver more personalized and relevant messaging.With a unified customer view, agents can access comprehensive details about previous interactions, preferences, transaction records, and current sentiments. This allows them to address issues more effectively, anticipate needs, and offer tailored solutions.

Various sources of 360-degree data include:

• voice transcripts

• emails

• chatbot conversation history

• social media interactions

• RCS message history

• online community membership status

3. Real-time updates. Maintaining an accurate and up-to-date customer profile is non-negotiable, and making real-time data updates is critical to achieving this. This immediacy allows your teams to respond swiftly to changing needs and preferences, providing timely and relevant communication.

For instance, if a customer’s contact details or preferences change, real-time updates ensure that all channels reflect this new information, preventing communication errors and providing a frictionless customer experience.

“In our fast-paced, multichannel environment, keeping your customer information fresh and relevant is not just an advantage; it’s essential for sustaining customer satisfaction and fostering long-term loyalty.”

  — Wendy Mikkelsen, Senior Product Marketing Director - Digital Contact Center

1. Data silos. Picture trying to assemble a puzzle with pieces scattered across different rooms. That's what managing customer data feels like when trapped in isolated systems. Data silos hinder your ability to build a complete customer profile, leaving gaps that can affect your customer interactions and strategies.

2. Integration difficulties. Integrating data from various sources can be like trying to fit together incompatible puzzle pieces. The technical and logistical hurdles can be daunting— different formats, systems, and processes must align to create a seamless, comprehensive customer experience. Legacy systems can further complicate this process, making achieving interoperability and a unified view even harder.

3. Data accuracy. Imagine using outdated maps for navigation. Incorrect data leads to poor decisions, which derail your customer engagement efforts and impact decision-making. You must have processes to ensure your data remains reliable and relevant.

4. A robust knowledge base. A well-organized and continually updated knowledge management solution ensures that valuable insights are easily accessible and helps bridge the gap between fragmented data sources, making achieving a holistic customer view easier. Creating a 360-degree view of the customer is often useless if every system and team is using a different or outdated knowledge source.

— Wendy Mikkelsen, Senior Product Marketing Director - Digital Contact Center

Our AI-powered digital customer service software provides all the tools support teams need to design, scale, and continuously improve automated and human service interactions across digital, chat, social, voice, and other brand-owned channels. Our solution to achieving a 360-degree customer view compiles individual data from various touch points into a single view.

• Step 1: Define clear objectives

  • Set goals. Objectives could include improving customer satisfaction, increasing sales, or enhancing operational efficiency.

  • Align. Ensure your goals are aligned with your overall business strategy to drive meaningful outcomes.

• Step 2: Explore and identify data sources

  • Audit. Review current data sources, including social media engagement data, emails, support tickets, CRM data, chat transcripts, knowledge bases, and transaction records.

  • Identify gaps. Determine if additional data sources should be included to complete the customer view.

• Step 3: Choose the right technology provider

• Evaluate solutions. Assess various technology providers to find one that fits your data integration and management needs.

• Leverage expertise. Seek a provider like Khoros, who can streamline the process of creating a unified customer view with advanced tools and capabilities. Khoros has an out-of-the-box CRM connector at no additional charge and a premium CRM connector with added features to help you achieve and maintain a 360-degree customer view.

• Step 4: Integrate engagement solutions with CRM

  • System integrations. Connect your customer engagement tools and contact center solutions with your CRM to consolidate all customer interactions into one platform.

  • Data synchronization. Ensure data flows seamlessly between systems to maintain an accurate and unified customer profile.

• Step 5: Collect and organize data

  • Data collection. Implement processes for systematically collecting data from identified sources.

  • Data management. Structure and clean the data to ensure it is accurate and easily accessible. Use tagging and categorization for efficient management.

• Step 6: Implement data governance, safety, and compliance

  • Ensure compliance. Define data management, access, and usage policies to ensure quality, security, and regulatory compliance. Use encryption and access controls to safeguard sensitive information.

  • Access management. Set up appropriate user permissions and access controls to prevent unauthorized access to integrated systems.

• Step 7: Train your team

  • Provide and support. Equip your team with the knowledge and skills to use the new system effectively. Offer continuous support and resources to help them adapt to the new processes.

• Step 8: Regularly update and review

  • Maintain data integrity. Continuous monitoring ensures that your customer profiles remain current and accurate.

Imagine converting your CRM database into a powerful tool for understanding and connecting with your customers. In this blog, we explored how analyzing customer interactions, preferences, and feedback can help you create messages that truly resonate. We also discuss how integrating data sources can enhance your CRM, providing sharper insights and empowering your team to focus on meaningful engagement.

Regularly updating your data ensures you're always one step ahead, transforming your database into a dynamic customer engagement engine. Consider these practices to transform your approach to personalized customer communication.

Khoros Service is a solution that helps enterprise businesses scale their customer service operations quickly. It seamlessly blends synchronous and asynchronous modes of customer engagement. ​

Our customer service software allows brands to serve customers on their digital channel of choice with unmatched operational insight to boost satisfaction and reduce costs. When you unify multiple channels in a single solution, you empower your agents with the ability to engage across all touchpoints, including but not limited to:

• Messaging apps like WhatsApp, Apple Messages for Business, and Line

• Social networks like Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn and WeChat

• Review sites, like Google Play Store, iOS App Store, Yelp, and Trustpilot

• Brand-owned channels, like web chat, in-app, Email, SMS, and Voice

• Owned communities, forums, and knowledge bases