Here are several excerpts from an interesting post by Seth Grimes, an analytics strategist with Alta Plana Corp., The Myth of 360 Degree Views:
We’ve all encountered the promise of 360-degree customer views, marketing-speak that asserts that BI solution X, CRM solution Y, or Sales Force Automation (SFA) solution Z considers customer information from all angles with the implication that (everyone else’s) non-360-degree solutions are inferior.
Yet. I’ve never seen the “360-degree” claim fulfilled. Some element is always missing. I can’t think of a single solution that considers all pertinent customer information –
- Information from every customer touch point
- Past behaviors, current interactions, and likely future actions
- Information from sources that have only recently come on-line, and
- Larger market views that contextualize information about individuals
– that is, not one or two, but all of these. Here’s my own take on 360-degree views and how they can finally becoming reality…
What are the claims? Here’s one example: “Agents can work efficiently from anywhere in the world with 360-degree views into customer interactions and real-time business intelligence.”
This example, one of many, cuts the 360-degree problem down to size: it neglects non-contact-center Web-site interactions and it ignores predictive capabilities. There are many customer touch-points: point-of-sale, whether direct in-store, by phone, or on-line or indirect via a sales channel; support, whether in-person, on-line, or via a contact center. And people and businesses are prospects before they become customers and in unfortunate cases they progress from customers to ex-customers. Call this the customer life cycle. A true 360-degree view would encompass customer acquisition by integrating all relevant sales, marketing, and customer support data and it would look at both a customer’s history and the customer’s current interactions with your company. Further, it would also harness predictive modeling to warn of customer-loss risk (and also to surface cross-sell and up-sell opportunities).
For more on this interesting viewpoint, check out the complete source article.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Personally I think there is a bigger fallacy in 360 degree views – there is an assumption that having such a view will magically result in better customer treatment. Well, it might, but it is certainly not automatic. Unless companies know what they are trying to do, what decisions they are trying to make, then having more data will not help. Decision first, data that will help with that decision second. If you need to decide something and only a 360 degree view will help then go for it. But often something much less is all you need to make the right decision
JT