Why Every Business needs a Customer Data Capture Strategy
A data capture strategy sets out how you collect and manage information about your customers, clients and prospects. A good data capture strategy will deliver high quality customer data, allowing you to better understand your customers and enhance your relationship with them.
In this article we explain how to define a data capture strategy to ensure effective gathering of customer data.
Deciding what data you need
Firstly, it is important to identify what information you require to allow you to meet your objectives. Initially it may be easy to be guided only by what is currently available, or to feel overwhelmed with the sheer volume of data you already have. Good practice is to start by working out what information is most important. From there, you can then investigate where this information is currently captured or where it may be in the future. Don’t fall into the trap of collecting data because it might be useful. If you can’t think of a use for it now, don’t gather it. Asking for too much data, even if done gradually over time may alienate your customers.
Now you know what data you want, the next step is to determine whether it is already being collected. This could be in an IT system like a CRM, contact management, finance or order management system or somewhere less obvious; such as email signatures, paper invoices or elsewhere.
At this point it should be clear what data you are missing. This information could be obtained with a change to a business process or an additional step in the sign-up or sales process.
Review your customer touch-points to see where there may be opportunities to check and confirm customer details and perhaps add depth. For example, if you provide a yearly statement of account via post you could include a form requesting mobile phone number and email address.
The most important factor in requesting and subsequently using your customer’s information is consent. State clearly that you will not resell their details and be honest about how you will use it. If you plan on using the data for direct marketing let them know how and how often you plan to contact them.
An effective data capture strategy requires buy-in across the breadth of your business. For instance your accounts team may be diligently entering information in an agreed way and keeping the information up to date, whereas your sales team might enter similar information in an inconsistent format.
Defining the format of the data will reduce the likelihood of anomalies or outliers which could skew your findings. If you have internal staff entering information about your customers you may want to create a document that defines the format in conjunction with a programme of training.
Where possible it is preferable to avoid free text fields when collecting data direct from customers. By using drop-down lists or tick boxes you remove the requirement to validate that field and ensure the format of the data remains consistent. For example, if you request ‘Country’ as a free text field you are likely to get many variations of the same response; such as ‘UK’, ‘U.K.’, United Kingdom or ‘Great Britain’. Asking the customer to choose from a set list of countries resolves this problem.
It makes sense to ensure that the data you request is correct at the point of collection, rather than attempting to fix it later. Ideally this means validating the data as it is collected. A simple example would be to check that the email address provided via an online sign-up form contains one @ symbol. These checks are required anywhere data is collected, and should be consistent across all channels. The more robust the validation checks that are performed at this stage, the lower the chance of poor data quality.
