Customer Data Integration: Reaching a Single Version of the Truth

Foreword

Customer data is the most basic raw material required for building customer relationships. Ironically, while the raw material itself has never been in greater supply, converting it into usable customer information and insight has never been more challenging.

CRM has been defined in many ways, but the very words customer relationship management imply that a company is thinking about and acting toward its customers individually, one customer relationship at a time—in essence, taking customer-specific action by treating different customers differently. (After all, the term isn’t market relationship management or segment relationship management.) Of course, as more companies adopt CRM as a business strategy, more customers will demand that all businesses should do it. Any company that values long-term customer relationships will learn quickly that customers want four basic things:

1. They want you to know who they are and to remember them from one event or transaction to the next, no matter what part of the selling organization is engaged. They want you to stop asking the same questions over and over.

2. They want you to remember what they need or what their specific preferences are. They want you to stop asking the same questions over and over.

3. They want a reliable and convenient way of communicating with you. They want to be able to tell you things about themselves and know you will respect that information and remember it. They want you to stop asking the same questions ...