How to get to know your customer with existing data? Step 1: Find your Data

There is a treasure trove of data about your customers sitting  in different silos within your organization–and some of it may even be sitting in silos within organizations that you contract with. How do you uncover these pockets of raw information, put them together and then surface the insights that can help you  better understand your customers and prospects?

We’ll help you navigate the often-challenging terrain in four fundamental steps that will allow you to dip your toe in the analytics pool, get some initial experiences and successes under your belt and then build on your new aptitude.

Step 1: Find your Data

1. Identify key data sources: Go through your organization’s directory and quickly come up with a list of people who have special insights into customer accounts (e.g., sales, customer service) and/or people who already rely on customer data to do their job (e.g., research and development, purchasing department).
2. Uncover valuable customer insights: Talk to your identified data providers and learn how their customer relationships have the potential to change the way your organization does business. Build rapport with these stakeholders and identify customer challenges, roadblocks to growth, and missed opportunities.
3. Enlist a third-party data expert: Data mining may sound simple, but it can be a daunting task, particularly for large, fragmented organizations, that have a greater level of complexity involved in bringing all possible stakeholders (internal and external) to the table. A third-party expert can elevate your potential for uncovering vulnerabilities and opportunities across customer touch-points.
4. Implement a data discovery process: After you go through the exercise of finding and interpreting valuable customer data, determine how your organization can continually share and analyze customer information. Define roles and responsibilities and create a process centered on discovery, decision-making, collaboration and transparency.

Knowledge is power. Find your customer data. Understand it. And, get to know your customers. What challenges, if any, have you faced finding, accessing and interpreting customer data?

Stay tuned for future posts that will outline the remaining 3 steps in your analytics journey, or download this white paper designed to help you understand how to turn your raw data into accessible, actionable insights from virtually any source within your organization. Get started today!

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