Modern work is changing how sales teams operate and how customers expect to interact with them. To achieve operational excellence, sales teams need a complete,…
Modern work is changing how sales teams operate and how customers expect to interact with them. To achieve operational excellence, sales teams need a complete, 360-degree view of all customer information to enhance customer relationship management. Top sales performers are those who get a competitive advantage and find new ways to boost sales by accessing all relevant customer data, both unstructured and structured, including transactions, outbound communications and purchase history. This means going beyond traditional customer relationship management (CRM) systems, which deliver only structured data, to integrated systems that can surface relevant content that is often difficult to find.
Demystifying Customer Information Management: The Complete Guide to Unlocking Value from Customer Data
In today’s hypercompetitive business landscape, customer data is more vital than ever for gaining actionable insights to drive growth. However, with customers spread across multiple touchpoints, many organizations struggle with scattered, inconsistent customer information locked in silos. This is where a robust customer information management strategy becomes critical.
This comprehensive guide demystifies customer information management, explaining what it entails, benefits, best practices, and how to leverage it to engage customers intelligently.
What is Customer Information Management?
Customer information management (CIM) refers to the infrastructure, processes and practices for consolidating customer data from disparate sources into a central data repository, maintaining its accuracy and integrity, and deriving strategic value from this unified view of the customer.
In simpler terms CIM aims to create a single source of truth for customer data across the organization and ensure it is complete consistent, accessible and actionable. Powerful CIM provides comprehensive visibility into every customer interaction and touchpoint.
CIM Capabilities and Components
Robust CIM solutions comprise capabilities like:
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A master customer database or data lake unifying data from all channels
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Data standardization, deduplication and cleansing
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Integration with operational systems like CRM, marketing and service
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Identity resolution connecting records referring to the same customer
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Data quality monitoring to maintain accuracy
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Self-service access to customer profiles in real-time
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Analytics, segmentation and automation based on data
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Omnichannel engagement leveraging insights
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Security, privacy and access controls
The key components of CIM include:
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Unified customer database
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Data integration and management tools
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Analytical capabilities
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Points of customer engagement
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Self-service portal
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Governance model with security controls
Together these capabilities create the foundation for knowledge-driven customer experiences.
Key CIM Benefits and Advantages
CIM delivers multifaceted value:
360° Customer View
By integrating data from CRM, marketing, sales, service and other channels, CIM provides complete, timely visibility into customer interactions, needs and behaviors.
Improved Data Quality
Standardization, deduplication and verification improve the accuracy, completeness and reliability of customer data for confident decision making.
Enhanced Operational Efficiency
Unified data eliminates redundancies, provides real-time access to customer profiles and automates manual processes to boost productivity.
Omnichannel Personalization
The unified dataset fuels omnichannel campaigns, highly relevant recommendations and consistent experiences across touchpoints.
Deeper Customer Insights
Aggregated data enables in-depth analysis of buying patterns, lifetime value, churn risks and micro-segmentation for precise targeting.
Informed Decision Making
Reliable customer data, analytics and segmentation sharpen decision making across the organization regarding offers, outreach, onboarding, service and more.
Stronger Privacy and Security
Centralized data makes it easier to enforce security controls, access rights and data usage policies to safeguard customer information.
The Power of a Single Customer View
The game-changing benefit of CIM lies in the single unified view of the customer it creates. Insights from this holistic profile can transform areas like:
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Marketing: Segmentation, campaign targeting, cross-sell / upsell opportunities
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Sales: Understanding buying signals, lead scoring, pricing optimization
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Service: Issue analysis, complaint reduction, churn prediction
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Onboarding: Personalized welcome kits, tailored educational content
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Compliance: Data rights management, lawful data usage
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Innovation: New products based on needs, frictionless experiences
With fragmented data, none of this is possible. Unified CIM data connects the dots into key customer insights.
Best Practices for Effective CIM
Follow these tips to maximize the value of customer information management:
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Make CIM a strategic priority with executive sponsorship and cross-functional buy-in.
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Institute strong data governance with stewardship roles.
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Develop a master data roadmap aligning to business goals.
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Start by identifying high-priority use cases that CIM can enable.
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Assess existing data sources, structures, quality and gaps.
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Leverage customer data integration tools to unify datasets.
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Build workflows to keep CIM data current across systems.
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Establish processes for ongoing data cleansing, enrichment and maintenance.
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Implement role-based access controls for security and compliance.
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Train employees on interpreting and utilizing CIM data appropriately.
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Measure program success via KPIs for data accuracy, CX metrics and adoption.
CIM is an evolving capability requiring sustained commitment. But done right, it is a game-changer – maximizing the value of customer data to better understand, serve and engage each customer.
Unleashing the Potential of Customer Data
In today’s hypercompetitive marketplace, customer experience is the #1 competitive advantage. Unlocking this requires transitioning from a fragmented, product-centric view of the customer to a holistic, customer-centric one.
This is the promise of unified customer information management. By breaking down data silos to create single customer records, CIM powers data-driven experiences and decision making across the board. The result – smarter marketing, sales and service tailored to individual needs.
But poor data quality dilutes the value of CIM. Organizations must invest in ongoing governance, maintenance and enrichment to develop trustworthy customer profiles. When high-quality CIM data is distilled into actionable insights and circulated organization-wide, its full business value is realized.
The possibilities of a reliable unified customer database are endless. Insights can drive personalized interactions across channels, micro-segmentation, predictive analytics, attrition reduction, new product development, smarter pricing, and much more to create more relevant customer experiences.
With people sharing less personal data today, first-party CIM data is more important than ever. Ultimately, unified CIM lays the foundation for truly customer-centric decision making – the hallmark of high-performing customer-obsessed organizations.
How do sales operations implement better content management?
Sales operations play a key role in delivering connected and effective systems to their users. Associated customer content is often, dispersed throughout systems and departments. Sales operations should lead the way in connecting this information to customer records inside CRM.
Organizations should provide an integrated infrastructure that drives productivity through better-connected people, content, and systems and delivers a complete 360-degree customer view to sales teams. By automating repetitive tasks, while increasing information governance to reduce risks, sales teams can add significant value to their CRM systems through enhanced content management to better fuel processes and improve customer interactions.
What is a customer information system?
A customer information system stores and provides access to all data related to the customer. It typically links content and documents to a structured database system, such as a CRM, that defines the individual customer. With relevant customer information easily accessible through an intuitive system, organizations can help sales teams sell faster, improving productivity.
Effective content management platforms integrate with the tools that sales teams use every day for instant access to relevant customer information. This type of connection helps to move customers through the lead-to-order process quickly and efficiently with reduced friction.
How to easily manage your customer information
What is Customer Information Management (CIM)?
Customer information management, or CIM, is a system of processes that a company’s IT team might use to collect and organize customer data, so the company’s leadership team can use that information to support business intelligence strategies. This information might come from a variety of sources, including web traffic and purchase lists.
What is customer information management?
Customer information management (CIM) is the practice of managing customer data to encompass every customer identifier and data point across an enterprise. It organizes disconnected customer information and makes it instantly accessible in a CRM and by an authorized user who requests it.
What is customer information management (CDM)?
CDM is a specialized subset of customer information management that focuses on the accuracy of the data points within a system. Data management programs can allow a company’s IT team to standardize customer information, combine duplicate customer accounts and apply filters to data points.
What is customer information?
Customer information, or customer data, is a collection of details and data points about a company’s customers. This information can be used for various purposes, including marketing sales, product development, customer care, and business analytics.
