Winning and retaining customers in today’s market goes beyond delivering value at individual touchpoints. It requires creating a connected customer experience from start to finish. While each touchpoint is crucial, their effectiveness is most impactful when they work together in the context of the overall customer journey. According to McKinsey, delivering consistent, informed experiences from beginning to end can offer a distinct competitive advantage, leading to higher customer satisfaction, enhanced sales, improved retention, reduced service costs, and increased employee satisfaction.
As technology advances, even the simplest buyer journey has become more complex and involves more touchpoints than ever before. Creating a connected, end-to-end experience is a challenge, which is why the Customer 360 is highly sought after. By bringing together every customer touchpoint, this tool allows businesses to understand the entire customer journey and deliver personalized experiences at every step.
While commonly seen as a tool for marketing teams, the benefits of a Customer 360 extend to all areas of a business. Teams across the organization can use this tool to drive efficiency and improve business outcomes. In this overview, we’ll briefly discuss the Customer 360 and its benefits, explore how companies in different industries leverage it, and examine how it provides every team with a single source of truth for leveraging customer data to drive better outcomes.
Understanding the Customer 360
A Customer 360, or 360-degree view, combines customer information from various sources and interactions to create a unified view of every available data point for each customer. Technically, this manifests as a table in the data warehouse with one row per customer and columns for every customer attribute.
Creating a Customer 360 is a challenging task, with only 14% of companies having achieved it by 2022, while 82% of those that have not still aspire to the goal. This is because building a Customer 360 is a data problem that involves several unique technical challenges. RudderStack Profiles, a Customer 360 solution, was built to address these challenges.
The power of an actionable Customer 360 is undeniable, evident in the significant investments made by businesses. This emphasizes the high expectations associated with Customer 360 projects.
Benefits of Customer 360
A Customer 360 allows businesses to build strong customer relationships at scale by centralizing and unifying the required customer data. This facilitates personalized customer experiences at every touchpoint, driving several benefits, including optimized customer acquisition, personalized experiences, increased operational efficiency, and improved customer loyalty and retention.
How Different Industries Leverage Customer 360
The benefits of a Customer 360 transcend industries, with each industry using it differently to enhance the customer experience. We’ll explore examples from seven different industries, showcasing how a Customer 360 can be implemented to elevate customer experiences in retail, eCommerce, healthcare, FinTech, travel, media, and more.
Every Team Can Leverage the Customer 360
While traditionally associated with marketing and sales teams, the value of the Customer 360 extends to every part of the business, allowing every team to move the needle and drive better outcomes. The data warehouse should serve as the foundation of the customer data platform, enabling every team to access complete customer profiles and leverage them in their daily activities. From customer support to product development, the Customer 360 has a significant impact on business operations company-wide.