Managing the quality and completeness of customer data

Abstract

Although companies have been collecting customer-related data for years, this was normally for administration rather than customer management. While larger companies have more recently collected customer data for database marketing (to recruit new customers, sell more to existing customers, support customer service operations and retain customers), returns are usually limited because most data are still held and used departmentally. The growth of contact centres, e-commerce and more complex value chains has raised additional issues of enterprise data management and exploitation, while demonstrating beyond doubt that available data are insufficient to support new customer management processes. This paper considers these issues and proposes tried and tested approaches for addressing these customer data management issues in a practical and achievable manner.