Customer management

The quality of your customer data doesn’t simply affect your IT department, but your whole business. A good data-profiling solution will help you understand what problems exist in your recordset and what needs to be done to fix them – both now and going forward. Look for a platform like Experian’s Aperture Data Studio, which provides automated, easy-to-use tools to draw your attention to critical issues.

Once you’ve identified the gaps in your customer data, how do you go about filling them with rich, relevant data? Expertly curated data sets drawn from a wide variety of trusted sources, such as those offered by Experian, can enhance your records to provide a comprehensive understanding of your customers. The data that Experian provides is regularly updated, another crucial advantage, and can be accessed directly through Aperture Data Studio.

If your data is spread across multiple databases or locations, a process called identity resolution can bring it all together in one place. This involves taking a feed of unique identities that have been assigned to every individual in the UK and matching them to your own records. This helps you spot duplicated accounts and offers a more rounded view of customer transactions. Experian’s ExPin includes this functionality and contains ID data derived from over two billion pieces of data.

Once you’ve brought a customer’s records into one place, you need to be able to present that raw data in a digestible format. This enables you to use it to inform decision-making and give you stronger insight into customers. An SCV helps you achieve this, as it provides a single convenient place to view all your customer activity, making it easier to manage and connect to them.

Your customers’ finances are constantly in flux, so credit providers need to be able to evaluate their financial status at any given moment to foster a long-term, responsible relationship. A tool like Delphi Customer Management scorecard helps you obtain extensive data that can be easily incorporated into your own systems and records.

With a potential audience of thousands, how do you personalise your communications with each individual customer? One solution is to analyse online customer behaviour to anticipate major life events – such as moving home or having a child. A tool like ConsumerView Triggers provides daily, weekly or monthly prompts to enable you to target prospects when they’re most receptive to your offers.

The earlier you can spot a financially vulnerable customer, the better your options for managing that risk. By pooling your data with other similar organisations, you can get a consolidated, up-to-date picture of your customers’ financial health. Experian’s CAIS (Credit Account Information Sharing) network lets you share data with over 400 banks, lenders, insurers and utility companies, which helps you identify potential credit issues.

How do you balance the need to perform a thorough ID check with making the experience as smooth and safe as possible for your customer? Look for a system that assesses the information as it’s entered to help you quickly determine if the transaction is genuine. For example, ProveID compares the applicant’s details with over one billion records held by Experian to provide a simple traffic-light rating to facilitate fast, but confident, decisions.

If you’re looking to integrate identity verification into your own in-house systems, then look for a system that’s seamless for your users while meeting regulatory requirements. Experian’s Authenticate takes an electronic, risk-based approach by capturing a range of biographical information that can be validated quickly online to produce a scorecard that can be adapted to your business’s risk policies to provide you with the confidence to make an informed decision.

Applicants are often asked to prove their identity by supplying forms of ID. Avoid the inconvenience and time-consuming requirements of physical checks by adopting a solution that allows applicants to upload digital copies of physical documents to an online verification process like Experian Document Verification. This performs a series of robust checks to verify the documents are genuine before confirming they belong to the applicant.

Regulations demand you set up a risk policy that provides a focus on due diligence checks and customer monitoring. Choose a tool that not only monitors your entire portfolio for potential new risks but which allows you to define your own risk policy. You could also opt for a service like Compliance IQ, which goes further by automatically enforcing and auditing your risk policy approval process, as well as helping you to spot hidden risks.

If you bring everything you know about your customers into a single location – a Single Customer View – then you create an environment where you can easily identify more opportunities to engage with that customer. An SCV can also be used to create a picture of your ideal prospect, helping you develop marketing strategies to uncover – and effectively target – new lookalike clients.

Every company needs a good contacts list to find new B2B partners. Put your trust in a database that, while comprehensive, can be filtered to reveal the most valuable new prospects for your offering. Experian’s BusinessView lists full contact details for five million UK companies and can be refined using hundreds of variables to provide you with a list of the most promising leads.

If you can identify which businesses are actively looking for your products, then your marketing job is half-done. Using smart modelling tools you can analyse your customer base to identify whether a business has a call for your products so that you can focus your resources on chasing productive leads. Tools like Experian’s Share of Wallet can estimate how much they’re likely to spend too, helping you prioritise your sales drive.

Growing your business requires snappy, smart decision-making based on reliable information. Whether you seeking new opportunities or considering an acquisition or merger, make sure you conduct a thorough investigation into your prospect’s financial history using as wide a range of data as possible. MarketIQ brings Experian’s comprehensive business, financial and risk databases together to offer you a clear, accurate and complete view of markets, companies and individuals.

The first step in any data management strategy is to ensure the customer data you hold is accurate and compliant. Data cleansing plays a key role in this process, and you should start by profiling your current data using a solution like Experian’s Data Quality Healthcheck, which will provide you with a clear view of what’s required to bring your data systems up to scratch.

Once you’ve identified missing, inaccurate and out-of-date information, look for tools that can automate the process of identifying errors in your records, then removing or amending them as required. Experian provides a range of contact data validation tools as well as a dedicated platform – Aperture Data Studio – to ensure your data is reliable.

With your data cleansed, it’s time to bring it together into a single view. A Single Customer View (SCV) doesn’t simply make your data easier to manage and view, it’s a necessary step in remaining compliant. Look for a solution like Experian Link, which has been especially designed to help unite and migrate legacy systems within a compliant SCV.

It’s important you respect customer privacy, which is where a product like Experian’s Suppressions comes into play. This tool compares your data against nine regularly updated suppression data sets to ensure customer data is accurate and up to date or – vital with permissions-based marketing – removed if customers have chosen to opt-out.

While many customers are happy to receive marketing messages across multiple channels, it still pays to find out exactly what they’re looking for, and when they’re looking for it. Segmentation targeting helps ensure messaging is relevant and timely, and a tool like Experian Mosaic provides you with the ability to treat customers as individuals and communicate accordingly.