The single customer view is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. It’s a concept that’s relevant to nearly all areas of a business, and can help give clarity to data and shine a light on valuable customer insights.

What is a single customer view?

A single customer view is an aggregation of all data an organization has on a particular customer, presented to give a clear overview of that them and their specific data.

In other words, it allows you to create a profile of your customer so you can get a clear overview of where they are at in regards to your business.

What kind of data is included in a single customer view?

This will entirely depend on the data you collect on your customers and what’s really important to you. For a single customer view to be valuable, it needs to be set up to highlight what’s useful for those using it.

Contact details are great, but does a full address and phone number need to be front and center when you’re looking for their purchase history?

Think about what the single customer view is going to be used for and organize it around that.

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Why do you need a single customer view?

There are a number of strong reasons for creating a single customer view. We’ve listed them below, but the underlying message is that data is more valuable when you bring together all of your sources in a useful way.

Improved targeting

Whether it’s a mailer or ads, getting targeting right can massively improve their chances of success. Having a detailed single customer view means you can better categorize them for targeting.

With a mix of all that data you can also create better categories that are more focused. Broad categories have their place, but being able to get hyper-specific has its own rewards too.

Improved customer experience

A single customer view should include all the communication a customer has had with your company. That’s everything from phone calls to tweets.

With all of this in one place it means when they get in touch in the future there are no missing pieces. Your customer service agent can get up to speed on everything quickly, meaning the customer doesn’t have to explain things for a second time.

For anyone who has dealt with a call centre before (i.e all of us), we know how much better that makes our experience.

Smoother internal processes

Need to find out the last product a customer bought? Or who owns the account? What about who they last spoke to and the outcome of that chat?

You can always chase this up by contacting relevant departments, but a single customer view should mean it’s all there already. No emails or phone calls – you can find everything you need without taking up more of your time.

This makes internal processes far speedier and can help you solve a customer’s query or problem faster too. Everyone’s happy.

Better attribution

What exactly were the steps a customer took to finally buy your product? With social media, PPC, traditional marketing, word of mouth and all other touch points playing their part, there’s an infinite amount of ways a person may finally hand over their cash.

With a single customer view that vital step can become much easier to figure out. By tracking interactions, whether it’s a few guide downloads after clicking a Google ad, or an email saying they were reminded about your service by a friend, having it all together means you can chart a journey.

As always, attribution is hard to get exact. But this can often bring steps on the buyer journey to light.