Ignoring messy data costing businesses billions across APAC

Article by Billy Loizou, Area Vice President, Amperity

Sending customers promotional emails for products they already own, blasting them with ads for clothing they don’t like, or placing them on hold for 45 minutes as a customer service representative tracks down their details when they want to return a pair of shoes. These poor customer experiences can turn off even the most loyal customer away from your brand. It’s a conundrum APAC businesses face every day – and a challenge they are desperate to solve. In its simplest form, the issue stems from data or rather ‘messy data’.

Alarmingly, the cost of poor customer experience is high, impacting businesses with billions of dollars every year in lost revenue. According to the global Zendesk Customer Experience (CX) Trends Report 2022, nearly 70% of APAC consumers feel as though customer service is an afterthought for businesses. Yet, 94% say they are willing to spend more with companies that personalize the customer service experience, and 71% reveal they would switch to a competitor after one bad customer service experience.

Turning data into insights

Customers provide businesses with a wealth of data — from loyalty programs to transaction history and email engagement. But the tricky part is making sense of it and then putting it into action. Quality data fuels consumer business and opens the path to delivering personalized marketing experiences.

However, companies can’t personalize experiences when they don’t know who their customers are. This is why identity resolution is so important as it turns scattered data into concrete customer information. And without it, it’s virtually impossible to treat your customers as the unique individuals they are. Identity is the foundation for true personalization.

What is identity resolution?

Identity (ID) resolution is the process of connecting and matching different data points across multiple devices and channels to form a unified view of a single customer, allowing brands to connect the dots between fragmented data to form a complete picture of an actual person. The benefits of getting ID resolution right are the cornerstone to any organization’s success:

• Real-time insights: With an accurate customer data foundation, all departments across the company have the same access to customer information in real-time. This access ensures the customer will have a seamless journey at every touchpoint, whether that’s in-store, online, or with customer service.
• Future-fit for a cookieless future: Even more, quality ID resolution prepares organizations for a cookie-less future by building a hearty, privacy-compliant, first-party data set, providing a buffer against increasingly strict privacy policies that limit the use of third-party data. With deeper customer relationships, brands can speak to their customers on the individual level, boosting customer loyalty and increasing lifetime value.
• Improving performance and ROI: Smart segmentation allows brands to create highly targeted campaigns for specific customer segments, cutting down on redundancies. This gives brands the ability to react in real time and effectively allocate budgets, cutting down on expenses.

Choosing the right technology solution

The goal of ID resolution is to identify the same individual within and across all data sources that contain customer information. The right software can provide you with a strong customer identity foundation, allowing you to build the most accurate and comprehensive view of your customers to help you manage and grow your business.

First-class ID resolution software should be powered by machine learning (ML). With ML, match rates and accuracy improve over time even when unique identifiers are incomplete, inconsistent, or unavailable. At the same time, ML-based ID resolution uses probabilistic data linking, allowing human-like logic to catch inconsistencies that more rigid matching schemas couldn’t process.

It’s also key for your ID resolution software to be transparent, providing a clear idea of the process. This builds trust and confidence versus ‘black-box’ processes that don’t show how an answer came about. ID resolution software should also provide a stable customer ID and allow for enterprise scalability – handling and resolving massive amounts of customer identities quickly and cost-effectively, regardless of the size of customer data volume.

Even more, the best solutions are flexible, allowing for simple updates and management and not ‘one size fits all’ to ensure they meet your unique business needs. Above all, expertise should be at its core, providing you with an implementation and support team with deep experience and know-how.

The right ID resolution platform enables brands and organizations to take control of their customer data, systematically improve customer relationships, foster brand loyalty and win.

Find out more by downloading Amperity’s Identity Resolution: Connecting the Dots and Understanding Your Customer guide here.

[About the Author]

Billy Loizou, Area Vice President, Amperity

Billy Loizou has 10+ years experience in design, technology and marketing. He has worked with some of the world’s most renowned and respected brands, helping them improve their customer experience and drive profitability.

About Amperity

Amperity is the leading Customer Data Platform provider that helps companies use data to improve marketing performance, build long-term customer loyalty and drive growth. Amperity’s flagship enterprise CDP is used by many of the world’s most loved brands, such as Alaska Airlines, Endeavour Drinks, Kendra Scott, Kroger, Lucky Brand, Planet Fitness, Seattle Sounders FC, Under Armour and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. For more information, please visit www.amperity.com or follow @Amperity.

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