What is 360 degree customer view?

A 360 degree customer view is a term that defines a comprehensive understanding of customers. It is acquired through big data analysis and advanced data gathering from a number of touchpoints in the customer’s journey. The technique plays a crucial role in helping you understand what a customer is like, what they prefer, their past purchases (offline AND online) and overall, how, as a brand, we can provide a better, real time, personalized experience for them.

A 360 degree customer view is a view of the past, the present and the future of customer relationships. Among the past activities of customers, businesses are able to see their customer’s product views, interaction history across a number of channels, other product/service activity, campaign activity and so much more. Based on this, it also enables you to look at the present situation of customer relationships whenever they reach out. Starting off with information as to who they are and how they relate to the organization and spanning all the way to the context of their interaction at the given moment can be deduced.

Why is 360 degree customer view so important?

Facilitates the creation of more marketing campaigns and strategic sales

The availability of well-rounded data is like a treasure chest to a marketer. The more information we have on a customer the easier it is to come up with methods to reach them. And the best part is that these marketing campaigns will not go in vain. With 360 degree customer view, proper targeting and personalization are much easier to achieve. That itself promises great feedback on the customer’s part resulting in higher sales than ever.

Drives customer loyalty

This goes hand in hand with amazing marketing. When customers realize that they receive a great deal of personalized attention from a brand it makes them feel comfortable as a shopper. Customers are very much likely to stick with a brand that gives them that feeling and settle down with it for quite a while.

Cost effective

Data driven marketing campaigns not only look much cooler than flat insensitive targeting, they also work better on a lower cost. Sure, data analysing processing takes up a few bucks but it’s nothing compared to traditional advertising campaigns that don’t achieve as much.

How can you achieve 360 degree customer view?

As important as it is to achieve it, it’s not easy. The global research firm Gartner concludes that fewer than 10% of companies have a 360 degree customer view, and only about 5% are able to use this view properly to grow their business. It is challenging but it’s evident that if executed with proper dedication and organization, it will give you the edge in the competition. Here’s a guideline to get you inspired: 

Using social listening tools

There are a few tools that have been designed for businesses to track their social media progress and the feedback that they get from their online followers. One such tool is Mention. As the name suggests, this social media monitoring tool allows you to monitor all your mentions online. Another similar tool is Hootsuite. It allows you to track online mentions in real-time, allowing an immediate response to them as well.

Thorough data analysis

To reap the ultimate benefits of being able to gather data, it is important to understand that no matter how trivial your interactions with prospects might be there is data there that could help you out. Even if these interactions go south there is definitely something to take from it. Through data mining it is possible to extract the most trivial of data and use them in an organized analytical process.

Auditing data

In order to carry out an organized analytical process, monitoring how and where data is stored is important. This is basically all about figuring out the mechanism behind data gathering and storage and keeping track of timely processes. One way to get started would be to establish a platform where all users from your business could upload their data into your system. This way the chance for data to be left out becomes minimal. The next step would be to start organizing all data into a high quality array of information that you could easily use to analyse the behaviour of your prospects.

In the age of information, marketing has found its own way to evolve and become something much more comprehensive than what is was before. Now it goes hand in hand with concepts such public relations and consumer relations. However the eternal foundation to great marketing is creativity. Make sure to add a touch of creativity every time you attempt reaching new customers. Good luck! Reach out to us if you have any concerns, suggestions or general feedback.