How to become a true customer-centric company with data management
Updated: May 4
Prioritizing the needs and expectations of customers is now the guiding light for companies that reach successful outcomes. It is a philosophy that should translate into maximum personalization in light of the new challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. People seek to be adequately supported and increasingly demand truly relevant experiences.
How does the customer-centric approach combine with efficient and responsible data management?
Accelerated by the pandemic, digital transformation has empowered actions focused on caring for and retaining consumers. Today, brands have a wealth of data that allows them to deeply understand their current and potential customers, as well as appropriately accompany them at every stage of the purchasing journey.
In fact, by helping to collect and organize millions of signals related to preferences and consumption patterns, the big data revolution has brought innovation and flexibility to the marketing universe, enabling real-time decision-making to be maximized.
Unlike the strategy pursued by many companies for years, which focused solely on offering products and services to a mass audience, what sets companies apart today is understanding the new and changing needs, concerns, and aspirational desires of each consumer.
However, being a customer-centric company requires much more than placing the customer at the center of the stage.
Many companies focus on accumulating consumer behavior data and using that information to enhance segmentation, improve sales, or reduce costs.
But to ensure long-term success, a customer-centric strategy must possess a holistic view of the customer, and all business decisions must be based on customer satisfaction. It is about integrating the customer-centric philosophy into the data-driven organizational culture.
Attracting and capturing people's attention, as well as establishing a lasting and constantly nourished bond, can only be achieved when companies can offer trust. Long-term relationships are built on this foundation.
As consumers are aware - and increasingly concerned - about how brands handle their data, the best equation for combining a customer-centric and data-first approach lies in managing the vast amount of information available in a unified manner.
Moreover, all the data that a company possesses must be reliable and protected. This is the only way to make responsible business decisions and comply with all privacy regulations.
A truly customer-centered business model is thus inseparable from technology. Only proper and centralized data management allows, on one hand, the delivery of value and the provision of hyper-personalized experiences to customers, and on the other hand, the planning of successful long-term business strategies.
In the face of current and future challenges, embracing digitalization while protecting consumer information and utilizing that data to provide value represents the only key to genuine competitiveness.
(Source: PowerData)