Who are you?

As a philosophical question, you probably have a fairly good grasp of the answer when it comes to your own life.

However, the way businesses see us is patchy at best. Duplicated, incomplete, inaccurate data that is spread around systems creates an issue when it comes to generating an accurate profile of who an individual customer is.

When I consider my own data, I use multiple email addresses, have seen my surname spelt multiple ways, and use Dave and David interchangeably. My postal address can be written in endless ways depending on the input form used. It’s messy data.

Businesses will store this data across finance, operational, CRM and sales systems. You may notice this when you phone a call centre and are asked for policy numbers, order tracking codes, or some other identifier. It becomes more transparent that your records are split across systems and teams when that request is followed by “ah, I’ll need to transfer you to another team in that case…”.

It’s not just the data I provide either. Brands are tracking website visits, the content we consume, our social media interactions, and how we use their mobile apps. This tracking information can then be combined with my first-party data. This opens up further insight into my interests and intentions.

For example, if I’ve just purchased a product and start reading the returns policy on the company’s website, it should be obvious that I’m not happy and considering a refund. Brands that can use this data will retain customers, reduce services costs, and ultimately win share of wallet.

For customer focussed brands, Identity Resolution unlocks real benefits:

• Advanced Personalisation: Utilising the full 360-degree view of customer data to serve personalised messaging across channels
• Compliance: Ability to gather all PII data from across systems on the individual and to ensure responsible marketing in regulated industries
• Improved Service: Less “screen switching” during customer interactions and the ability to pre-empt service problems
• Accurate Analytics: Taking account of full customer data set to accurately measure loyalty or predict propensity to take certain action

Failure to get the full picture of who your customer is will lead to issues in making better business decisions that reach a customer. As the old-adage goes, garbage in, garbage out. We can’t expect our marketing to be optimal if it’s only utilising a small percentage of the data available.

To find out more information on Getting Started with Identity Resolution.

If you’d like to find out more about CACI’s real-time ResolvID service for identity resolution, get in touch.