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The term '360-degree customer view' may be one you have heard of but not fully understood, or you may be familiar with the term but may not have considered it for other organisation types including Charities, Fundraisers, NFP's, Institutes and Associations.

Either way, the purpose of this article is to explain in simple terms exactly what it means, allowing you to decide if your business or organisation would benefit.

* Within this article, the term 'customer' also refers to supporters, members and donors.

What is it?

By definition, a 360-degree customer view is the overall result of collecting and analysing your customers data at various touch points throughout your relationship with them and using that data to produce an easy to read ‘road map’ of their journey.

Ultimately the goal of this would be to streamline your workflow and resources whilst maximising profitability, although at SubscriberCRM, we feel that this data should be used to allow improvement in your customers experience and allow you to gauge and continue to provide your customers with the best possible service.

Who is it for?

The most obvious answer for who would benefit from a 360 - degree customer view would be any business that sells goods or services to their customers in return for compensation i.e. money.

A less obvious, yet increasingly relevant answer would be Charities, Fundraisers, NFP's, Institutes and Associations. Why? Because, like paying customers, they are the life blood of your organisation and their involvement most likely justifies the very existence of your organisation!

Why is it useful?

To obtain a 360-degree view requires all aspects of the relationship you have with your customers throughout their journey to be tracked and stored in a comprehensive, secure and easy to understand manner.

In doing so, you will be able to see all elements, past, present and even the ability to road map a future of your customers behaviour.

Having a clear insight into your customers behaviour and correspondence will provide a range of advantages that provide a mutually beneficial outcome: Here are just a few,

• By understanding exactly who your customers are, will allow you to appropriately group them and communicate with them more effectively, target correspondence and tailor campaigns. The upside of this means recipients are only being sent relevant information, and you are able to gauge results in categories by type.
• Recording customer data in a single, shared location will empower everyone within your organisation to assist customers effectively, equipped with full insight in to purchase history, transaction progress, previous correspondence and interactions from your organisation up to now. Not only will this improve the customer experience, but will show professionalism and efficiency on your part!
• With customer experience set to overtake price as the key brand differentiator by 2020, it's easy to see why a commercial organisation would benefit from a clear view of their customers, however this is also a vital consideration if your customers are organisation members or donors, as a positive experience will help ensure retention and interaction.
• By engaging with, understanding and keeping in touch with existing customers, such organisations promote themselves and thereby retain and attract more customers.

How is it achieved?

How you go about achieving a 360-degree customer view is a huge catalyst in the overall effectiveness and ultimate success of the process and requires commitment and 'buy in' from within your organisation, as well as a trust worthy, compliant system in which to store and manage your data.

The chances of commitment and 'buy in' are heavily increased if the location for all this data is easy to use, quick to understand and simple to access; all of which should be the very basics of a good CRM system.

Permitted multi-departmental access is also vital, allowing everyone from Admin, Sales, Marketing and Accounts to keep each customers profile updated relating to their relevant correspondence providing an easy to read/access customer profile on hand at the click of a button.

Having the freedom to tailor your CRM specific to your organisation is also very useful in ensuring all relevant data is captured, stored and utilised.

Finally, and potentially the most important thing to ensure when storing any data is the subject of GDPR compliance. With companies recently incurring fines of almost £200m enforced by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), it's not a subject to take lightly.

SubscriberCRM

Hopefully by now you should have a brief understanding of what a 360-degree customer view is, and just some of the reasons as to why you may benefit from it.

SubscriberCRM is tailored for member-based organisations, including charities, fundraisers, NFP’s, Institutes and Associations and is specifically designed to be a secure, one stop CRM software solution with GDPR built in by design, to help your organisation grow and succeed through better relationship management.

SubscriberCRM is scalable and provides a platform to manage, communicate and interact with your customers with the possibility of additional bespoke features and seamless integration with your existing workflow.

Please visit our website www.subscriber.co.uk or call us on 01375 489 820 for more information.