Bill: Welcome everyone.
Bill: I’m Bill Hanifin, the managing editor of The Wise Marketer.
Bill: I’m here with Aaron Dauphinee today, and we’re here for an episode of The Wiser Loyalty Series.
Bill: Aaron, how are you?
Aaron: I’m doing well, Bill.
Aaron: How are you today?
Bill: Good.
Bill: Doing really well.
Bill: People wouldn’t know if we were just together earlier this week in Toronto, Canada.
Bill: Great to see you and the team in-person.
Bill: Nice to have a little bit of that in-person time outside of the Zoom box.
Bill: Hopefully, we can meet more of our listeners here in person in 2025 too.
Aaron: Yeah, that’d be a great goal for us to reconnect with folks, particularly as we talk about our Loyalty Curriculum, which focuses on our certified Loyalty Marking Professional Designations.
Aaron: Yeah, wonderful.
Bill: Yeah, absolutely.
Bill: If you’ve been joining us for these Wiser Loyalty Podcasts, you’ll know that we highlight a course from our Loyalty Academy Curriculum every month.
Bill: We dive in deep.
Bill: We talk about some of the things that we hope are still accepted as best practices and are valid, and we challenge some of that.
Bill: We talk about what’s new and give you a look into the future a little bit.
Bill: This month, we’re talking about Loyalty Technologies.
Bill: That’s based around our course number 109.
Bill: We’ve had a couple of discussions here.
Bill: Today, we’re going to talk about something really interesting, which is the, should it be the Holy Grail?
Bill: It’s the 360-degree view of the customer.
Bill: We’re aiming to understand the customer, all of us, obviously.
Bill: It might be one of the most difficult chores in the entire universe is to understand people, human beings, and understand why they do what they do, how they make purchase decisions.
Bill: And so we’re going to talk about that a little bit today.
Bill: So Aaron, you up for up to the task?
Aaron: Yeah, absolutely.
Aaron: Do you want me to hop in or do you want to stop to kick off?
Bill: I can go.
Bill: I mean, we were always talking a lot about, just, we want to make sure that we have consistent definitions, I guess.
Bill: That’s one of the things that we’ve been doing throughout this series.
Bill: We want to like clear out the buzzwords, have consistent definitions, have some understanding, clear understanding concepts that we talk about, which is part of our curriculum, the way we approach the curriculum.
Bill: We talk a lot about customer centricity, and how it’s made possible through data-driven insights, actions taken by the brand for the customer’s benefit or just to satisfy their needs.
Bill: We’re collecting data in different streams, we’re putting it together to try to gain this understanding.
Bill: But I’m sure you know, and you will probably hardly endorse the idea of how difficult it is to understand how people think, you know, get inside the inner workings of the mind of the customer, in quotes, which means every human being, that all of the brands are dealing with and trying to engage.
Bill: So it can be incredibly complex, much more challenging than just something, and maybe beyond the capacity of just having a single source of data, a single source of information to be able to accurately, consistently, really understand and take action to the benefit of the consumers, and hopefully to try to get it quote right every time.
Bill: So, you know, the reality is there’s a pretty big set of data sources, expansive one that can culminate together to give us a really fulsome view of the customer.
Bill: And then fulsome view, it’s a term we can talk about in another episode, is this 360-degree view.
Bill: So it’s not by looking at the customer just from one angle, let’s say, you know, it’s obviously looking at them from multiple angles, you know, the concentric circle around that person.
Bill: So I’d say that a 360-degree view of the customer refers, if you want to clarify the term and really define it, it refers to the concept of consolidating data from various customer touch points and systems into one place.
Bill: That could be a member database, a CRM system, it could be a CDP.
Bill: This view will help you and your team gain a complete and accurate picture of your customer and what they need for your brand.
Bill: So that’s the way I would define it, and I’m interested to know your take on that, if you’d look at it the same way.
Aaron: Yeah, Bill, it sounds pretty on point for me, but I’m wondering if we can do a little experiment on this really quickly.
Aaron: And so as you know, I’ve been taking a fairly progressive interest in AI and its impact on loyalty marketing over this past year.
Aaron: And so my curiosity, of course, had me wondering, if I search an AI algorithm at the onset of this to see what the definition of the 360 customer view would be, what it would generate, and if it would generate a similar understanding to what you just proposed there.
Aaron: So before this podcast, I did a little search with one of the AI tools, and the output of that was, and I quote, a 360 degree customer view is a comprehensive understanding of a customer’s preferences, behaviors, and interactions across multiple channels.
Aaron: It’s created by consolidating data from various touch points and systems such as websites, apps, CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, social media, and customer support channels.
Aaron: And so to create a 360 degree customer view, businesses can conduct a data audit to understand the current level of customer data they have.
Aaron: They can collect and consolidate customer data from various touch points and systems.
Aaron: They can develop in-depth profiles based on the collected facts.
Aaron: And last but not least, they can take a group of customers based on those profiles.
Aaron: So, or they, sorry, they can group customers based on those profiles.
Aaron: I’d rather say that incorrectly there.
Aaron: End quote.
Aaron: So, so it’s pretty close.
Aaron: It’s not quite as succinct and eloquent as how you framed it up, but still pretty good, at least at peppering out a few of the broader data sources that could be used in that fulsome lens that you’re talking about to better understand our customers.
Aaron: So, so I guess the point here is really just a quick little test of why is good.
Aaron: And we certainly still do advocate for the market expertise as some source of validation in terms of some of these definitions.
Aaron: So I just wanted to hop in there.
Bill: Do you remember we used to talk to somebody who it was in our legacy in loyalty marketing, people that talked about their listening posts.
Bill: That was the first time I heard about it.
Bill: We need to have a listening post.
Bill: And so when I think about the definition and what you were just reading right there, and I tried to backfill into what systems would you need to get different types of information and where does it come from?
Bill: What does it represent?
Bill: I mean, you could say you could start with your CRM system.
Bill: That’s obviously your core way of aggregating information to understand somebody, but it can also be your loyalty management system.
Bill: Because then we’d maybe have some of this profiling CRM-ish data, but we’re also mirroring that up with transactional behavioral data, the first-party data elements that we’re also collecting through qualitative sources, surveys, and so on.
Bill: So you’ve got a couple of different systems that would be aggregating those types of data.
Bill: But don’t forget about, if you think about listening posts especially, think about member care in all the support channels that we have now for resolving when customers come to us and seek to resolve an issue, or they have a concern, or they just have a question.
Bill: Could be anything from a product return to just a warranty issue, or some question about usage, or something like that.
Bill: Now we know that that happens through multiple channels too, doesn’t it?
Bill: It could be a live chat on the website, it could be an e-mail, it could be some other kind of a survey, even from a receipt or something where we’re getting some interaction.
Bill: When you think about the more channels we create for customer feedback, then we have to anticipate how do we ultimately vector the information we’re getting into the database of choice so that we can really make use of it, I think.
Bill: Then there are interactions in store.
Bill: Think about that.
Bill: What about the live interactions with in-store people, travel interactions?
Bill: You’ve told a lot of airline stories, but having conversations at that, check in a reservation desk in an airport, I mean, do any of those conversations get fed back into a database at some point?
Bill: They probably should be.
Bill: So this whole discussion, when you think about it, it could get complex, and it just introduces a whole idea of gathering information from customers from every source, and even online activities would be another.
Bill: So, you know, they’re obviously the websites.
Bill: Now we’re driving people to mobile apps, so there’s another source of data.
Bill: We’re collecting a variety of different types of conversations on the mobile app.
Bill: You know, people are purchasing online, they’re on e-commerce platforms.
Bill: So, and then lest we forget the social channels.
Bill: I mean, somebody could be talking to your brand on X, or, you know, on Snapchat or TikTok or any number of channels.
Bill: So, there’s just the feeds, the feeds get, they’re kind of growing.
Bill: And so, you have to think there’s that level of complexity, how we put them together.
Bill: So, all of it to me combines into, you know, how do we fill in the blanks on customer needs?
Bill: How do we get what we need so the brands can adequately respond to customers and interact the way that they really want?
Bill: So, the customer’s feeling like they’re kind of getting the value for talking to you in the first place.
Bill: So, conceptually, that’s the way I look at how many ways we’re aggregating data.
Bill: Question is, where does it end up?
Bill: So, since we’re in the technology course this month, and we’re talking about, I think we get the definitions out of the way.
Bill: I’d love to hear from you a bit of a framework for how the technologies that we do have access to can be utilized together, or at least what kind of tech brands should, what type of tech should the brands be thinking about to optimize their understanding of the customer.
Aaron: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Aaron: I think let’s take some time to touch on the quote, unquote, how a little bit versus the what, as you said, in terms of the definition.
Aaron: So, there’s certainly a lot of considerations for how you kind of Lego block or fit together all the pieces, and I’m sure there’ll be a bunch of differing opinions on this particular topic from people in the industry, and even those even on the peripheral or outside of it as well too.
Aaron: But I think we need to take a starting point at least on what loyalty marketers need to think about.
Aaron: Again, not saying it’s what you absolutely need, but it’s certainly a starting point to think about things.
Aaron: On the types of technologies that you want to have an understanding around or at least kind of a view into and then decide whether or not they’re going to fit into the framework of what your goals are for with your customers.
Aaron: So recently, I actually read a report.
Aaron: It was by Snowflake recently, and it laid this out kind of rather well, at least I thought it did.
Aaron: So I’m just going to borrow from them a bit in full transparency.
Aaron: I feel like today is my day of borrowing with AI and now a provider.
Aaron: But I mean, the stuff that exists there really does start to form a lot of commonalities in terms of the things that we think about and have discussed in our curriculum.
Aaron: And so this one layered in nicely for me in terms of some of the stuff that we’ve talked about as marketing data foundations, I guess, is what you describe them.
Aaron: So and what you’re looking at in terms of your core technology.
Aaron: And Snowflake in this report talked about exactly that, setting a nucleus, if you will, of the marketing data foundation.
Aaron: That was their term that they use.
Aaron: I like that a lot, which talks about your LMS or your CRM system or your CDP in some regards.
Aaron: And just saying, you know, that this is what’s going to house and connect the different attributes of your members on your member’s part of me.
Aaron: The interactions that they’re having, whether it’s actual transactional data or connection points like you talked about, like maybe they’re capturing things that are happening in terms of the moment, in terms of the flow through the customer journey.
Aaron: But being able to capture all of that in terms of operations of the program and in service of the brand.
Aaron: And so you get things such as, you know, you’re collecting your member attributes, the demographics on them that you capture through the onboarding process or you dynamically update.
Aaron: You get survey data.
Aaron: You talked about that earlier.
Aaron: Of course, this system, this core is really going to talk about the segments that they fall into.
Aaron: And so you’ve got analytical models and scoring that needs to layer into that, based upon their profiling and the transactions or the interactions that they’ve earned, and really what their status level is in your program.
Aaron: The way in which you communicate to members would house into this.
Aaron: And then of course, even the operational data that allows for the program to just run.
Aaron: You know, you’ve got auditing, you’ve got security and fraud considerations, all of this.
Aaron: And I’m sure I’m leaving things out in the interest of time, but you get this idea of running a program has a lot of connecting nodes that come together in this core layer.
Aaron: And then now take that, and that’s for say one of your brands, or if you’ve got multiple products or multiple lines of business, now you got to take an enterprise view.
Aaron: So repeat that by how your customer could interact across all those touch points that are connected to an enterprise.
Aaron: And you start to think about the data and tools and platform technologies that can, first of all, integrate or integration in modeling tools.
Aaron: The second bucket is probably getting some consent management, if it particularly is at an enterprise level.
Aaron: And then the third is about the business intelligence.
Aaron: So what do we do with it?
Aaron: How do we make it smart and savvy?
Aaron: And so that’s kind of the core nucleus with the layer over top of it.
Aaron: And then the next layer beyond that is really talking about well, marketing and advertising tools and platforms that you can consider for technology.
Aaron: So you got to think about what are your programmatic solutions?
Aaron: What are your measurement and optimization tools?
Aaron: How do you identify individuals for the onboarding, as we talked about, to get them to a CDP, a customer data platform?
Aaron: What are the marketing and customer engagement solutions?
Aaron: That’s another set of technologies that you need to evaluate.
Aaron: Analytics and data capture tools.
Aaron: And how do you actually enrich your data or keep your data clean with data hygiene?
Aaron: All of those have different technologies that can piece together.
Aaron: And so, I think the last wrapping, if you will, to tie this all at the very top of it, the final layer of technology that you want to look at, is really around that new set of data, social platform integration and publishing tools.
Aaron: And so, it really started to get beyond just what would be housed in a program, but are in other disciplines of marketing.
Aaron: And so, we’re taking that big out loyalty look in terms of customer transicity, and really it’s getting down to quite a comprehensive and again, full transparency here.
Aaron: We’re just scratching the surface of what the breadth of consideration is in terms of the technologies and tools that you need to look at to really have this 360-degree view.
Aaron: And so, there’s a lot of rigor and discipline that goes into this.
Aaron: And then it begates the question of, do I build it internally to get to this 360 view?
Aaron: Or do I patchwork a bunch of specialist technology solutions that can get together to provide this view for me?
Aaron: So that’s really the next question is beyond the, what I’m looking at is how do I piece it together?
Bill: Right.
Bill: And that question is one that we’re going to dig into in, I think, our next episode.
Bill: I’m going to get a view into where we’re cycling on building some of these things internally, or how do we adjust our MarTech stack to accommodate the building of a 360-degree view.
Bill: But you know what?
Bill: No matter what, either way, in every circumstance, what I hear you saying is that it’s really about the unification of datasets.
Aaron: Yes, that’s a great way to sum it up, 100%.
Bill: Right.
Bill: So the question is, how do I do it?
Bill: I think for many years, people wanted to build this entire so-called stack internally.
Bill: I don’t know, at the same time, it seems like there’s more flexibility today.
Bill: There’s more bolting on and building together, maybe cobbling together, if you will, taking specialty applications, best in class, best in breed, and putting them together so that you get a best in breed result for the company.
Bill: So I think regardless of how you would do that, and we’ll hear from a CTO, I think, about this maybe in our next episode.
Bill: We’ll dig in some deeper on that.
Bill: But we’re advocates of the concept.
Bill: The only caveat that I would say is that just the 360-degree view implies that you want to know absolutely everything about every customer that you have.
Bill: And I think that it is a top-of-pyramid goal, but at the same time, you ought to be cognizant of the fact that you may be seeking to know more about people than you would ever hope to use in a marketing campaign.
Bill: So we’ve talked about this in other episodes, but the more you ask, the more there’s an expectation that it will be used in some way, or there would be evidence of the brand using it and realizing that, yes, Aaron gave me his data.
Bill: So now Aaron has an expectation that he’s going to be getting some kind of a neat offer, or personalized communication, invitation, or something like that.
Bill: But so the 360-degree view, we’re advocates of it.
Bill: We know it has obvious benefits.
Bill: It can help, obviously, brands gain a complete picture of their customers, understand what they want and need from the company.
Bill: It fuels all the analytics that can predict future customer behavior and determine all the proper forecast of outcomes of cross-selling, upselling, how to manage the retention strategies, and even more so, it can inform engagement strategies and help to manage the customer journey in a better way by delivering proper communications, personalized offers and product deliveries every step along the way at the right point in time.
Bill: So it’s a high calling.
Bill: It’s complicated.
Bill: I think we maybe need to think about, you know, the interesting thing if we came back to this is what part of the tech stack needs to change or where do we focus to get all this done.
Bill: So we probably ought to wrap it up right there.
Bill: We could go on about this one for a little while.
Bill: I think, couldn’t we?
Aaron: Yeah, it’s actually a topic where, like you said earlier, we’re only scratching the surface in these small episodes.
Aaron: And so we go to it in more detail in terms of what we cover and obviously our curriculum, but also just in conversations with people on an ongoing basis.
Aaron: This is one area that is changing rapidly and fast.
Aaron: And so I guess that’s redundant, rapidly and fast, my apologies, change quickly.
Aaron: And so we are trying to keep up with that.
Aaron: And so you can expect, you know, on an ongoing basis that we’ll try to refresh the components into this Loyalty Technology course in 2025 and beyond.
Aaron: So keep that in mind.
Aaron: But for any of those individuals that are listening to this for the first time and want to become more educated in terms of all of the different topics that we covered over the past year and lean towards joining our community of Loyalty Marketing professionals around the world, we’re very excited that we’ve just passed the thousand mark threshold in the last couple of weeks and fast gaining towards a couple of new milestones that are coming up, so we’re happy about that with our partners.
Aaron: But for anyone wanting to find out information, you can go to loyaltyacademy.org to find out more about our curriculum and join the community, as I said, of a thousand CMPs in now 55 countries worldwide, on six continents even.
Aaron: And then for anyone who’s wanting to hear about past episodes or from the topics that we’ve covered, you can always cover them off at letstalkloyalty.com with our partners.
Aaron: With Paula and team.
Aaron: And then also you can also go to our own website, thewisemarketer.com and pick up the Wiser Loti series there as well.
Aaron: So as always, wishing everyone to have a great week.
Aaron: And next week, we’re going to do a little bit of a foray, a little view into what we’ll be doing in 2025 as we bring a special guest in to talk with us.
Aaron: So that’s going to be a bit of a different format.
Aaron: So hoping that all of you can join us then.
Aaron: And as always, stay loyal.
Paula: This show is sponsored by Wise Marketer Group, publisher of The Wise Marketer, the premier digital customer loyalty marketing resource for industry relevant news, insights and research.
Paula: Wise Marketer Group also offers loyalty education and training globally through its Loyalty Academy, which has certified nearly 900 marketeers and executives in 49 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
Paula: For global coverage of customer engagement and loyalty, check out thewisemarketeer.com and become a wiser marketeer or subscriber.
Paula: Learn more about global loyalty education for individuals or corporate training programs at loyaltyacademy.org.
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