Zufriedene Kunden sind loyale Kunden. Daher ist der Aufbau einer nachhaltigen und guten Kundenbeziehung ein wichtiger Faktor für Ihren Unternehmenserfolg. Dabei spielt das Customer Master Data Management (CMDM), das Management der Kundenstammdaten, eine entscheidende Rolle. Denn nur mit einer ganzheitlichen Sicht auf den Kunden gelingt die wertschätzende Kommunikation über alle Touchpoints und digitalen Kanäle hinweg.
Your customers' master data is the central point of interaction with your customers, at all stages of the customer relationship. For example, while a product master record contains all the essential information about a product, a customer master record provides a centralized, unique, and consolidated view of all information about a customer.
This means A customer in the real world ideally corresponds exactly to a unique record in the customer master data - with a complete history and legally compliant consent statements.The record contains a rich customer profile and multiple relationships to other master data, such as the products and services the customer has purchased. Demographic data is added and reference data such as customer classification, industry, market, VAT rate or current discount level is assigned. And every customer interaction further enriches or adjusts this master data.
There is only one small catch. The "single point of contact" with the customer no longer exists. Today, information is shared and interacted with across countless touchpoints and digital channels. Customers interact with the provider directly or indirectly through social media, customer engagement activities, over the phone, or by subscribing to a newsletter. Data is generated through retailers, distributors, and a variety of e-commerce channels. This swelling tide of data increases the risk that customer information is no longer consistent and is often stored in a variety of systems and data silos. As a result, a clear view of the customer is lost.
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The paradox of customer centricity
It is paradoxical. The more actively a company interacts and communicates with its customers across all available channels, the greater the risk of losing sight of the customer. A study by the provider Uniserv11shows that this is not a matter of trivialities: one in three retail companies is dissatisfied with the quality of its customer data. Incomplete data and duplicates, i.e. customer data that exists twice, are considered particularly critical, and outdated and incorrect customer data is also common. However, while most respondents believe that high quality customer data is critical to business success, only one-third of respondents are taking any action to improve quality. This is despite the fact that regulatory requirements for customer data management have become much more stringent in recent years.
The reason for this imbalance: Reliable customer master data is not created by the good intentions of all-encompassing customer centricity alone. They are created by people, knowledge, processes, and systems. And it comes from management's commitment to providing the skills, budget, and resources for sustainable customer master data management.
Customer master data management is not a part-time job
Market research firm Gartner® defines master data or master data management (MDM) as "a technology-enabled discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of the organization's officially released master data assets. "22
The goal of MDM is to ensure the quality and reliability of an organization's master data. Customer Master Data Management (CMDM) performs this task for the customer data domain. This is no easy task because customer data is constantly changing. In Germany, a company name changes every three minutes, a company address changes every seven minutes, and a new CEO takes over every 30 seconds.3 ... This shows that customer data is a very dynamic matter - unfortunately, a one-time data consolidation that is carried out every few years is not enough. And customer data, especially for large, international companies, must always be viewed in the context of the corporate structure. In order to determine whether the buyer from the Spanish subsidiary actually receives the same discount as his Swedish colleague, the individual master data records must also be correlated.
The main task of CMDM is to merge, aggregate, and standardize customer master data from multiple sources to create a centralized and reliable "single point of truth" for customer data. By making this data available to all users, systems, touchpoints, and business processes, companies can create consistent and transparent customer journeys. All the information you need is available, whether you are selecting a product, placing an order, or handling a service or complaint. Consistent customer data creates a level playing field.
To achieve this, customer master data management must be viewed as a central and ongoing business function that requires clear accountability, sufficient budget, and in-depth knowledge.
Customer master data management in four steps
Due to the highly dynamic nature of customer master data, it must be constantly reviewed and revised. These tasks are typically performed using specialized CMDM tools that support typical extract, transform, load (ETL) and consolidation tasks. Master data management is typically done in four steps:
- Data Onboarding: Customer data must come from all sources. z. e.g., from the various touchpoints, e-commerce channels, and customer service, are collected and brought together in order to consolidate them. This data onboarding, like all subsequent steps, is not a one-time process, but occurs continuously, often in real time.
- Data matching and cleansing: When transferring customer data from a wide variety of touchpoints, it is inevitable that data duplicates will be created. Reasons for duplicates include input errors, merging of different records, name changes, abbreviations, and variants. Duplicate cleansing is one of the core tasks of CMDM. Duplicates often need to be merged automatically or semi-automatically.
- Data enrichment: Missing information and reference data are enriched, e.g. from third-party sources of large address providers, industry directories or from internal data sources.
- Data Distribution: The consolidated customer master data is made available again to all relevant systems and touchpoints via standardized interfaces and services.
Customer master data management enables true customer centricity
Sustainable, high-quality customer master data management cannot guarantee customer satisfaction, but CMDM is a key building block in the transformation to a customer-centric enterprise. Because only a centralized, accurate, and reliable view of the customer enables eye-to-eye communication. This builds trust, appreciation and loyalty. And in the best case, a happy customer who stays.
- https://www.uniserv.com/unternehmen/blog/detail/article/uniserv-trendstudie-unternehmen-sind-mit-verwaltung-ihrer-kundendaten-unzufrieden/
- https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/master-data-management-mdm
- https://www.computerwoche.de/a/so-halten-sie-ihre-kundendaten-sauber,1931848,2
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