Understanding The 360-Degree Customer Experience & Its Implementation

Today’s consumer expects companies to be agile and consistent in quality of service. As a result, it is important to provide a consistent experience across all touchpoints.

This is easier said than done. According to Gartner, around 10% of companies have a clear 360-degree view of their customers. The report further noted that approximately 5% of companies could use the 360-degree customer experience to grow their business strategically. 

A 360-degree customer view is about capturing customer activity across touchpoints and cohesively presenting them across departments in an organization so that employees can make better decisions while interacting with the customers.

Here is all you need to know about 360-degree customer satisfaction and how it can be implemented in your organization.

What is a 360-degree customer experience?

A 360-degree customer experience collects customer data on a single platform to provide a consistent, agile, and intuitive experience to the customer. 360-degree customer service includes all customer interactions across touchpoints to provide a comprehensive picture to your customer service team.

The 360-degree customer view can include customer interactions with a brand, including purchases, support tickets, social media activity, and the website. 

In other words, a 360-degree customer experience helps you get a complete understanding of the interactions the customer has had across multiple touchpoints. This helps provide better service to the customer by way of quick resolutions and helps in better handling of customer queries.

What does a 360-degree customer view show?

It is important to understand what a 360-degree customer view shows. It is only after you understand what it is all about that you will be able to use it efficiently for your business goals. Here is what a 360-degree customer view shows:

• The Past: A 360-degree customer experience would show the past interactions of the consumer with the brand. The past activity would include product/service activity, recent product views, campaign activity, process history, and interaction history across all customer service channels. 
  
  This helps in understanding the past behavior of the consumer and usually provides clues to the best possible route for an improved customer experience.

• The Present: A 360-degree customer view helps understand the present factors of the customer, such as who they are, is there a recent order placed by the customer, how they relate to the organization, and the possible context of the interaction. 
  
  This information is expected to equip the customer service team with vital information that can help in understanding recent behavior and stage of the buying cycle.

• The Future: By understanding the past and present behavior efficiently, you can also categorize consumers in brackets like upselling opportunity, cross-sell opportunity, or any other pattern as per your choice. 
  
  You can also understand vital information, such as the source that is bringing in customers and what kind of ads or content they are most interested in. This will help you finalize the future roadmap for your business.

How to implement a 360-degree customer experience in your organization?

Now that you understand the depth of a 360 customer experience and what it can provide for your business operations, it is time to learn about implementing a 360-degree customer experience in your organization. Here are the steps that you can follow to implement a 360 customer experience at your organization:

1. Use an efficient knowledge management  solution

One of the most critical steps in establishing a 360 customer experience in your organization is to select the right knowledge management solution. A knowledge management solution will help you integrate all customer information on one platform that can act as a single window for the past, present, and future of the customer.

A knowledge management tool like Knowmax can act as a single source with a knowledge base, visual device guides, chatbot knowledge, and decision trees to help your customer support team work efficiently. 

You can always integrate your CRM with a knowledge management solution like Knowmax and reap substantial benefits through complete customer information and structured knowledge.

2. Use social listening tools

Most of your customers spend hours on social media platforms and usually share unfiltered feedback on these channels. You should use social listening tools efficiently to understand what the customers are talking about your brands on major social media platforms.

By analyzing this feedback, you would be able to generate some insights into what is working and what is not working for your brand. 

More importantly, you would be able to understand how customers are reacting to your strategies. Social listening tools can also be used for modifying buyer personas and improving the efficiency of marketing efforts. 

3. Conduct a data audit

As you step on the journey to create a 360-degree experience for the consumer, it is essential to realize that there is a lot of data that already exists within the organization. This valuable data should not be ignored. 

Instead, it can act as a base for your business strategy in your quest to provide a 360-degree customer experience.

You should conduct a data audit to understand the current level of customer data you have and how it can be integrated with building a 360-degree customer experience. You may have customer details, past purchases, past interactions, or any other data type. This information can act as a foundation for a 360-degree customer view.

Concluding

Building a 360-degree view of a customer profile is ongoing and will take some time to gauge meaningful insights from this set of data. However, it is an enriching exercise and has the potential to bring in multiplier benefits for your business.

Once you build a 360-degree view of the customer for your business, you can put it together with other pieces of your CX puzzle.