What trends do you see currently in Digital Customer Experience?

The “Digital” part of Customer Experience is becoming increasingly important. A large portion of Infoverity’s customers are investing heavily in their Digital Customer Experience Strategy. One of the main trends that we at Infoverity see is personalization. Customers are becoming progressively demanding and are more and more used to receiving an experience that is geared towards their individual shopping behavior. Companies that won't be able to offer a personalized experience need to know their customer, their habits and preferences thoroughly. This translates into the necessity to collect, store analyze and consume all critical data on the customer.

How can customer data be managed effectively?

There are software tools available that can help organizations with the collection, analysis and optimal use of the customer data. Of course, choosing and implementing a software package does not guarantee the effective management of data, that you need for a proper strategy. The strategy needs to be owned by the various impacted parts of the organization and supported by top management

What are the main challenges?

There are two challenges related to the effective management of customer data that I would like to highlight. The first challenge relates to the fact that customer data is everywhere. Apart from demographic customer data like name, address and perhaps payment details, it is important to collect data related to transactions, for example the usage and payment history. Additionally, data related to behaviors and interactions are required to be able to form a complete 360-degree picture of your customer.

The second challenge is related to the ownership of the customer data. Quite often it is not clear within organizations who owns the customer data. Some of the data might be collected by the Finance team, but the Marketing team needs the data to be able to offer target campaigns. Without having a clear owner sometimes trying to get access is delayed, which then has an impact on being able to react quickly to market changes. 

What are the main features of a successful MDM strategy?

A key feature of any data strategy is to have the right governance in place. Having the right governance also eliminate the earlier highlighted challenge of the unclarity of ownership of customer data.

Data governance covers areas like Architecture, Company Culture, Data Quality and processes. In Infoverity we have a special team that focuses on helping customers analyze, implement and maintain the right data governance. Without the right governance, any strategy that you implement will not be up to date after a year or two and you might need to start from scratch.

What will the future look like for Digital Customer Experience?

One of the key trends of Digital Customer Experience is the increased use of Artificial Intelligence by companies. An example of Artificial Intelligence is the use of chatbots. Whereas a few years ago, only 2 percent of customer interaction was via a chatbot, Gartner predicts that within 2 years more than 25 percent of companies will integrate chatbots into their customer engagement activities.

Also, other use of Artificial Intelligence becomes more mainstream, for example the use of robots at a hotel check-in or a surgical robot designed to assist with complex surgery.

At Infoverity we help companies optimizing their data strategy to be able to optimally use Artificial Intelligence.