We’re Not There Yet
Savvy businesses, understanding that it costs six times more to generate a new customer than to retain an existing one, have invested heavily in systems to capture and organize customer information.
They are pursuing what is generally known as customer relationship management – the conjunction of sales, marketing and customer-service processes and applications. CRM has resulted from the evolving need to integrate data across various contact points to ensure a complete view of the customer.
CRM applications are fed and supported by extensive database marketing systems and repositories. I wonder, though, if these systems can link transactions and interactions online as well as offline.
The Web is individually addressable and provides two-way communications. Businesses can learn from and modify their interactions with customers based on immediate feedback. The ability to capture customer data at this level was not possible prior to the Web.
Yet a gap exists. There’s a limit to how much customer information can be assimilated, and how rapidly it can be synthesized and transformed into business intelligence.
Software firms are wrestling with this problem. But the systems to capture, integrate and deliver customer data in real time don’t exist yet, or are at too early a stage.
Traditional database marketing vendors understand the complexity of this task but haven’t seriously tackled integration of online transaction data.
No doubt this is hard stuff. New marketing applications will depend on good data. What’s needed is the next generation of customer business intelligence platforms.
Success ultimately will depend on the development of capabilities to:
– Capture customer interactions in real time.
– Integrate online interactions with past customer buying behavior.
– Quickly link customer data across contact points.
– Assimilate this information readily.
– Learn and act based on immediate insights.
It has been said that this is a golden age for businesses that serve their customers well. It may also be a golden age for those creative entrepreneurs who can help such organizations facilitate this process.
