Details are must while Aggregate is smarter….

‘Customer Id’ is a system generated data filed that is supposed to identify the customer in a unique way for any transaction with the business-   banking, insurance, telecom, utility, retail store, even ecommerce applications. The ‘Customer Id’ helps the business to capture details about a particular transaction and the depth of the details is designed in a way to complete the transaction seamlessly across business processes and futuristic need for retrieval. From the viewpoint of single-point data capture and internal audit, these details are a must.

However, its claim in identifying the customer across business has failed most of the times and the business ends up with a maze of ‘Customer Id’s for the same customer depending on the product or service the customer purchased and channels through which the customer interacted e.g. service center, branch office, internet, mobile, call center or social media.

Thus mere ‘Customer Id’ does not help rather makes the business struggle to identify the customer as a unique and real entity; which is needed by the business to understand customer’s needs and feedback so that the business can effectively work towards better service, loyalty, retention, potential cross/up sell and referrals. What the business needs is aggregation of all transactions and interactions of the customer across business and across its channels, either online or offline, to know the customer better. Aggregation can provide business a 360-degree profile of a customer in terms of demography, interest areas, past purchases, past feedback, networks, and connections. Single Customer View (SCV) is the concept that helps business achieving such aggregation through its methodologies around data cleansing, data standardization, data integration, de-duplication and analytics; thus makes business a smarter one delivering enhanced & personalized customer experience, and increasing level of customer acquisition & retention.