Customer Experience
In 2017, the Economist declared that the world’s most valuable resource was no longer oil – but data. Data is a powerful, potent source of information to fuel the growth of a business. But because there is now such a wealth of data the sheer volume can swamp companies, as well as panic consumers concerned about privacy and data security.
Different sources give different answers as to what the term actually means - but there seems to be broad consensus around a few solid definitions. One, SCV is a visualised solution: a way to easily communicate and understand a method to organising data. Two, it's a process: an effort to organising data around customer profiles. Finally, three, it describes the database at the end of such a process: where businesses have access to a database full of customer profiles.
Implementing SCV poses many challenges typical of working with large amounts of information. It’s about getting at the good data and getting rid of the bad.
While implementation is supposed to filter and refine data, actually seeking out that data in the first place may pose an early initial challenge. It will be necessary to find it across many siloed departments (sales, finance and operations, etc).
Each of these will have its own methods for recording data, could cause some administrative headaches, and need to be done with the full consent and understanding of those departments.
B2B businesses have an extra difficulty: defining 'customer'. It is not so clear cut as for B2C: often with multiple touchpoints, ‘shoppers’ (i.e. clients) and oftentimes a longer relationship. It is then incumbent upon B2B businesses to first define a ‘customer’ in their particular industry: whether that’s a business, a branch or a person, like an operations manager.
The many definitions of SCV showcase a problem: there are many different approaches one can take.
Different departments, for instance, will have different priorities. Marketing may want an SCV to show highly-detailed market segmentation by gender, age - and other consumer data. Operations will want to see cold, hard numbers - sales, refund requests, etc. There must be clarity around which departments are involved and what insights are being sought. And prepare against scope creep once the project is underway.
You may also need to decide between a short and long term view. The needs of a business change over time: a short-term scope will perhaps be more informative, while a long-term scope prioritises data that can be remodelled, reinterpreted and reused - as the needs of the business changes over time.
Once these goals and expectations are set, it’s important that data is audited to figure out how much you have, what it’s worth, where it’s located and what can be used as part of an SCV project.
Having said: the two are nearly identical. They require businesses to obtain explicit consent from users before processing personal data (via cookies and third-party trackers, for example). Consumers can also withdraw consent at any time, at which point data has to be destroyed. Businesses are also tasked with storing data responsibly and securely.
Companies looking to implement an SCV approach to managing their data may be well advised to hire a specialist GDPR team to make sure they’re complying with the new rules.
Modern businesses are confronted with the daunting task of interpreting the sheer amount of data they accumulate through day-to-day transactions. Depending on who you ask, the SCV is a framework, a process or a product. But what it offers a business is a way to organise this data into a coherent view of its own customers to provide a greater level of service.
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