360-degree customer view: what is it and how does it work?

The term ‘360-degree customer view’ reflects the pursuit of the fullest possible view of individual customers and being able to combine all available customer data. You collect contact information in all kinds of places: orders in the store, via the website, downloads, interaction with your e-mailings, behavior in your app, on your social media, communication with customer service. There are also public data sources available, like demographics and other statistics. With marketing technology, you merge the behavior, needs and opinions of your customers. The customer view you form provides insight into important relationships, timing and opportunities for your organization.

• What is a 360-degree customer view?
• Personalization with a 360-degree customer view
• 360-degree customer view marketing strategy
• 360-degree customer view at Ternair
• FAQ: Frequently asked questions about 360-degree customer view

What is a 360-degree customer view?

The 360-degree customer view is literally the combination of all customer data. By collecting contact information, sales information, buying signals, behavior and support communication, you won’t miss customer signals.

A 360-degree customer view is not a goal in itself. In a broader sense, it is about getting to know your customer as well as possible, so that you communicate a relevant message at the right time. Organizations with a handful of customers can do this by hand. But how to manage customer data in a growing organization, when serving several thousands of customers or when using multiple data sources where customer data is stored? A 360-degree customer view will help you understand your customers based on their priorities and preferences. For customer information you can do this 1-on-1, since you probably have consent and login information. This is more difficult with leads. You have less information, less consent to use it, and you need to make assumptions. Important for marketing, because it is their goal to convert leads into customers.

We help you use a 360-degree customer view in such a way that you can quickly and hands-on use selections of data from your customer view that are important for specific purposes. You will see that often only 60 degrees, 90 degrees, or 155 degrees of your total data will be sufficient. In fact, you will never use 360 degrees for a single campaign. The faster you can determine the data that really responds to wishes, the more valuable your 360-degree customer view. 

Personalize with a 360-degree customer view

The 360-degree customer view offers you the opportunity to personalize. This provides at least three advantages:

• Better understanding of your customer’s needs
  You better understand who is in front of you and what you have to deal with. That makes it easier to implement a customer management strategy. It prevents from relying on the latest communication with a customer. Instead, you take into account all the information you know about the customer.
• Stronger collaboration and more cross- and upsell
  The customer view helps to (further) improve the cooperation between sales, marketing and, for example, the customer contact center. A better understanding of the customer and needs make it possible to resolve customer service questions and complaints satisfactory and to use sales opportunities.
• Better predictions
  With all customer data in place, it becomes easier to analyze and make predictions. Salespeople can better assess their chances, while you can adjust the organization based on factual data if necessary.

Use our Customer Data Platform functionalities and Marketing database to collect valuable insights and information. It will lay the foundation for personalizing your business. You benefit from data-driven marketing that helps you provide your customers with relevant information and offers. You have a much better understanding of who you are dealing with, making it easier to tailor your offers accordingly.

360-degree customer view marketing strategy

A good 360-degree customer view strategy guarantees customers are central to the course of the (marketing) organization through a verified integrated customer view.

Our software helps you collect customer data, bundle it and then gain insights from it. For example, by using Advanced Analytics, or in the future possibly even Artificial Intelligence models, such as a recommender that indicates which message is best to send via which channel per individual customer. These insights therefore form the basis for making better decisions, both to better address the target group, to serve customers better and to steer operational processes. Think of delivery times, invoicing, logistics processes, onboarding and stock management. With the right strategy for a 360-degree customer view, customer satisfaction will increase and you will attract more new customers.

360-degree customer view at Ternair

With Ternair you use Customer Data Platform (CDP) functionalities that enable you to combine, transform, supplement and prepare customer data for 1-to-1 communication. In addition, you can categorize data sources like Leads or Individual website clicks and add a 360-degree marketing database. To combine customer data to calculate the ‘golden record’, record all attributes and calculate new attributes to increase marketing opportunities. Paying attention to all needs, use and behaviour, you will create rich profiles making it clear what your customers expect of you.

Our approach

Our software and method differs from conventional CDP and Marketing Automation software due to the flexible data model. Our software adapts to your customer data, so that no time-consuming and laborious data sync (import-export, fixed custom field mapping) is required and you immediately start activating campaigns with combined data. The valuable business information this provides determines which data you need to collect, clean and combine for a 360-degree customer view, instead of the other way around. Daily updates ensure you quickly and dynamically learn which data is relevant to your customers.

What’s more, you can build and modify each segment daily, whenever you want, without burdening the data or IT department. That’s your basis for optimizing personalized interactions in every channel.

FAQ: frequently asked questions about the 360-degree customer view

• What does a 360-degree customer view provide?
  The 360-degree customer view creates the possibility to always use those customer data that is important for a specific purpose (providing information, acquisition, conversion, payment, delivery, reviews). Thanks to a better understanding, you can address customers in the right way and adjust your organization where necessary.
• Do you use existing customer data?
  You use owned (first party) data, connect additional data sources and transform the data and combine. In this way you create the best customer profiles for each campaign, based on all (real-time) available data. Uploading separate lists is no longer necessary.
• What data can I collect?
  You collect, among other things, contact information, order information, payment information, behavior from mailings, behavior on web push and in-app messages and on your websites, downloads and leads from trade fairs and events, communication with customer service and from reviews. You can combine this with publicly available data for enrichment or as a trigger to communicate. For example, sending a text message to specific customers in the morning because there are many traffic jams in their region. A profile that is as rich as possible offers the best basis for continuously improving your positioning.