Customer data management is the process of collecting, managing, and analyzing customer data from diverse sources to form a unified view of each customer. It’s really important because it helps to answer questions on how customers make buying decisions.

With this, your company will deliver unique, personalized, and real-time customer experiences.

The more channels you provide your customers for support and interaction. The more opportunities you’ll have to collect data and use it. Companies have data, but they don’t know how to use it properly.Even, when it’s very popular to hear that data, is the real treasure for companies today; many times this data gets stored in departmental and functional silos, and brands fail to use it to their best potential. You have a company but still, you’re not using data? Here are 3 reasons why customer data management is necessary.

• It helps improve decision-making based on real information.
• CDM  regulates how companies are using information because of its sensitivity, which helps build trust with customers.
• It guarantees you a consistent way to generate the most valuable insights and maintain data quality.

Remember that customer data management is more than just collect the data.  In order that it can be helpful for your business, you need to analyze it and manage i.There are different ways to understand customer data, that’s why today we will help you by explaining its 4 different types.

1. Identity data.

It’s the personal information about the customer.  That makes it a unique part of your data because it contains details that are different for each persona.

Moreover, this type of data allows you to create highly specific personalizations that can be very helpful to your company.

Businesses obtain identity data from direct customer transactions with your organization, such as purchasing a service or product, completing a sign-up form, downloading a content asset, etc.

2. Behavioral data

Behavioral data is information collected from any type of customer interaction or activity with your business. As well as the actions customers took to reach you. This data is used to a more detailed understanding of the different customer touchpoints and intentions during their journey with your business.

3. Quantitative data

Quantitative data is a hard customer metric that you measure to analyze both performance and gaps in your business operations. It includes customer service metrics, online/offline transaction metrics, and campaign metrics.

4. Qualitative data

It involves customer feedback, reviews, and opinions on products and services. This type of data can be collected using feedback mechanisms, group discussions, personal interviews, etc. where descriptive answers are usually the format of the information.

Now that you know the 4 different types of customer data, let us explain the management process that consists of 4 steps.

• Data Collection

You need a single database to collect and store all your data. Information can be collected from various channels based on the different mechanisms your company has put in place. It could be data collected from forms submitted by the customer or behavioral data that you have been tracking using monitoring tools.

• Data Segmentation

This is a very important part of data management because it helps create unique and identifiable data clusters that become important in the last step of this process.

You can create detailed customer profiles and data stacks using segmentation techniques.

Moreover, the sales, marketing, and customer service departments have different customer information requirements since each function has a different purpose for the data. Without segmentation, it is difficult to ascertain what exactly the teams that have access to this data can do with it.

• Data analysis

Once the data has been isolated, and detailed customer profiles have been defined you can start analyzing the data for valuable insights. The purpose of analyzing your data is to create specific initiatives that address individual customer needs. With the help of analytics, you will generate team-specific reports that make aid decisions taken by various departments.

• Data Validation

When all the information is in place, the final step is to move these pieces into the right systems for use.In addition, this requires you to integrate the systems used by customer-focused teams with the central repository and have protocols in place to manage that data efficiently. There are many products and platforms you can use to effectively manage customer data.

A helpdesk software like Freshdesk can be used by support teams to handle information originating from customer queries and feedback.

Here are some ways Freshdesk enables better customer data management:

• The ticket portal makes capturing complaint information simple.
• Its omnichannel capability integrates all information from phone, email, social media, and chat into one system.
• Access to the same data by different teams, or sharing access to other teams allows for easy collaborations between teams
• It stores a customer’s issue history allowing any agent to establish context easily during follow-up conversations.
• Reporting and Analytics helps you derive detailed insights and create customized dashboards to drive your decision-making.
• Powerful integrations open up possibilities of what you can use customer data for.

These are just a few examples of how Freshdesk helps companies with their data management.Did you know you can try Freshdesk for free? We have a 21 days free plan, sign up here. If you need more information about this product, our team of professionals is ready to offer you completely personalized attention adapted to what your company needs. Contact us now.