Martin Hayward, former director of strategy and futures, Dunnhumby says the concept of ‘owning’ your customers is outdated.
The last few years have been a great time for companies and brands that have had good access to data about their customers, and the ability to turn that data into insight quickly. Fast, granular customer insight has proved to be a significant competitive advantage for retailers particularly, but also to many web-based and direct businesses with easy access to customer behaviours.
It is likely however that this competitive advantage may now begin to diminish as customer data becomes an ever more plentiful asset. The tidal wave of customer data that a modern life creates is now starting to reach such scale and detail that it is unlikely that any individual proprietary set of data will be able to match what is potentially available from third parties.
As consumer life is rapidly digitised, it is almost impossible not to be leaving a constant stream of data about where you are, what you buy, which media you consume, who you talk to, which shops you enter and so on and so on. This data is increasingly not proprietary to individual retailers or businesses but gathered by intermediaries; financial services, telecommunications and media businesses….initially almost by accident. A lot of the data being gathered is peripheral to their main businesses, but hugely valuable as an insight asset to share with others.
Looking to the future, there may well be other organisations who know as much, or more, about your customers than you do. This will require a deep change in mindset away from the current rather arrogant notion of ‘owning’ and ‘managing’ customers towards a more collaborative and co-operative environment where the customer needs to be sought out and wooed rather than taken for granted. We might actually be about to enter an era where the needs of the customer really do drive the activities of companies and brands, because they know that others also know them intimately.
It’s probably a good idea to spend some time now assessing who will know your customers better than you in the future, and to plan how to either work with them, or work round them, to maintain the knowledge and intimacy that is so important to profitable, long lasting customer relationships.
To look closer into how better customer data will radically alter the future of marketing, why not come to the launch event for a new report, “Marketing Communications Towards 2020: Looking for meaning in a land of plenty”, which I’ve recently written for mmc.co.uk. Find more details on MMC’s Future of Marketing event here.
Why not take the opportunity to read more Customer Champion blog posts.