Everywhere in the world, every hour, businesses keep asking themselves, “What do our customers want?” To answer it, they turn to data—their most reliable map. Data serves as a map to answer this question in depth. Companies rely on regular reports and analytics to personalize services and use targeted marketing to enhance engagement.
Recently, companies have shifted their focus to anticipating customers’ needs and using data to grow. In 2023, 32% of businesses chose customer feedback analysis as one of the main strategies to improve customer experience. At the same time, 21% of CRM leaders have admitted that they struggle with adapting to customer expectations, while 22% face difficulties understanding customer needs.
Customer 360 is one of the most effective tools for addressing these challenges. A practical instrument for gathering customer data at all touchpoints, Customer 360 is more than just a technological buzzword. It’s informative and provides deep insights into customers’ preferences, behavioral patterns, and demographics—all of these are invaluable. With it, businesses can improve their service or product proposition, reach new audiences, reduce customer churn, and boost brand loyalty.
This article provides a Customer 360 definition, explains the tech behind it, lists Customer 360 benefits, and shows how to implement this concept into your operations.
What are customer 360 solutions?
Let’s start with the simple question first: What is Customer 360? It is a unified, multidimensional view of every customer based on the data gathered from different touchpoints across a business.
The Customer 360 view compiles information from purchase history, interactions with the staff (including the support team), website/app behavior, preferences, and demographic details. Such information allows a company to have a comprehensive understanding of its target audience and provide more personalized and high-quality service.
On a larger scale, it facilitates a brand’s performance and helps the business make smarter strategic choices in sales, marketing, and services.
At the core of Customer 360 lies data integration that takes all the existing information and turns it into a system to be used by specialists from various departments if needed.
Today, companies use various technologies to create a Customer 360 solution. Usually, they take a traditional Customer Data Platform (CDP) or a SaaS solution like Salesforce Customer 360 or Tealium or develop one themselves. Managers use these technologies to categorize and analyze information, which allows them to create a centralized platform.
Now that you’ve learned the answer to “What is a Customer 360?” it’s time to discuss what it does for your team.
Benefits of implementing a Customer 360 solution
Why do you need Customer 360, and what’s so special about it? Adopting it can transform how your business sees its target audience and handles its operations. Let’s take a look at the key advantages of this method.
Improved customer insights
With a 360 customer view, businesses can gain deeper insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs. HubSpot considers the number of surveyed organizations using CRM tools for customer service operations to be low, 68%. This data demonstrates the potential for a wider use of Customer360 tools.
You can understand your target audience by having a complete view of how customers behave with your company. This additional information will give you a clearer picture of what your customers need, allowing you to adjust your strategy, product proposition, or anything else, all without expensive surveys and focus groups.
Increased operational efficiency
When you know the direction, your path is more straightforward and faster. The Customer 360 platform does two crucial things that make all your processes smoother: it eliminates unnecessary information and provides a transparent view of attitudes and preferences.
These two functions enhance the workflow and enable specialists to work with a single source of truth, which will be helpful for all departments.
Personalization and targeted marketing
Detailed customer profiles make it easy for businesses to recognize the potential for segmentation and personalized marketing. Customers want to feel like more than just a number in a business’s Excel sheet—they want to know that you have taken the time to understand them and meet them at their level.
For example, 78% of customers want more personalized interactions than before. Targeted campaigns will drive conversion rates and engagement.
Increased customer retention and loyalty
This consequence stems from a deeper understanding of each individual, which increases trust and improves overall service quality. A 360-degree customer view taps into both the soft and hard skills of your business and cultivates a new kind of relationship with the audience—one built on the pillars of customer satisfaction and business growth.
Interestingly, 2024 was the year when customers reported the highest rate of being seen as individuals (73%), while their concerns regarding data privacy have grown (71%). This signals that instruments such as Customer 360 should demonstrate data protection while keeping customer-centricity high.
Streamlined customer service and support
In 2021, the global revenue of the customer personalization and optimization software and services industry reached $7.6 billion. Customer service significantly relies on the data because it helps consultants avoid mistakes and make special offers for the target audience.
Access to customer history in real time substantially boosts the efficiency of every interaction. It serves as a source of information about preferences or prior pain points that must be addressed, which eliminates the need for the customer to discuss everything from the starting point when contacting a new support specialist.
Data-based decision-making
Leadership can make strategic decisions with detailed data instead of stumbling in the dark. Customer 360 solutions offer actionable insights that support forecasting and product development. There’s no need to do much additional research since you have a unified customer view and know what needs improvement. This cuts resources that would have been spent on unreliable paths or dead ends.
These benefits of a 360-degree customer view showcase how you can enrich your business operations to connect with your target audience.
Customer 360 across different industries
Unsurprisingly, Customer 360 solutions are multipurpose and have value in any industry—after all, customer data is applicable everywhere. They transform the markets that already centralize their audiences and give them an even greater edge.
Retail and eCommerce
In an industry where personalization is key, Customer 360 helps retailers understand what their customers want, which products appeal to them more, and their abandoned cart behavior. Companies collect information to change product prices, adjust logistics, and target promotion initiatives.
For example, a fashion retailer can send promotions to customers likely to want a particular product based on their previous purchasing behavior and browsing history, all thanks to Customer 360.
Financial services
Banks and financial institutions have access to vast amounts of data that can noticeably boost their customer relationships and service quality. About 54% of consumers expect financial providers to use their data for better experiences.
In the financial industry, customers interact across multiple channels: ATMs, online banking, branches, or call centers. All of these interactions are accumulated to allow businesses to formulate a clearer picture of their clients’ behavior and risk profile.
To illustrate, a client has recently contacted the call center about investment opportunities, and the bank will soon send them a list of personalized offers.
Healthcare
Hospitals and other medical centers gather information from EHRs, registration, insurance claims, and interactions with doctors and nurses. In healthcare, timely adjustments based on Customer 360 solutions aren’t just about comfort but also safety and professionalism.
Many people report feeling disrespected or even ignored in hospital settings, which can lead to decreased visits or poorer health behaviors. However, detailed customer profiles can help prevent accidental mistakes and offer proactive care management.
Healthcare was the industry leader customers trusted with their data (44%). An example of Customer 360 would be the data about a patient’s chronic disease: after being diagnosed, medical professionals get regular updates about the condition, test results, and appointment history. This can drive medication adherence and set up reminders to ensure a patient follows their treatment.
Hospitality
Personalization can make or break an experience for customers in hospitality. In 2020, half of the surveyed executives in the global travel industry mentioned that data is crucial for customer satisfaction.
Customer 360 allows hotels, resorts, and travel companies to track guest preferences, feedback, previous bookings, or even transportation mode. That’s how they can greet repeat visitors by name, ask about their previous menu choices, and suggest better accommodations or transfer solutions.
It can also inform the staff about client behaviors or languages they know, all to minimize issues during the contact. Customer experience with Customer 360 solutions can become richer and give them a sense of being seen once companies cater to their preferences.
Media and entertainment
Quite unsurprisingly, media platforms have to ensure that their target audience remains interested in what they have to offer—this means not just tapping into existing trends but also anticipating them.
Customer 360 helps companies keep tabs on users’ streaming preferences, search history, and device usage. This fuels algorithm-driven recommendations, personalized content feeds, and targeted ads that don’t annoy but drive sales.
Implementing Customer 360
If you want to create a 360-degree view of the customer, you’ll need to choose between two popular options that other companies often implement: a pre-built or a custom-built solution. Each has advantages that vary based on your organization’s goals, size, existing infrastructure, and predicted customer volume.
Pre-built solution
Today, the market has plenty of pre-built instruments for Customer 360: Salesforce Customer 360, Oracle CX, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 are all suited for this task and can be easily added to the system. They fit well with many commonly used business tools and are user-friendly and simple to use. They are quick to launch and have all the benefits of Customer 360 without spending money on developing one.
It’s a great go-to decision when you need the best practices without spending too much time or resources on extra choices.
Custom-built solution
Focusing on a custom-built solution for your Customer 360 will provide you with flexible instruments that specifically target your customer group, are built for your market, and can be upgraded as often as you need. Below are the primary considerations for teams that want to make their own custom 360 technology.
Expertise and tailored customization
Unlike pre-built instruments, the Customer 360 tech you develop will be suited just for you and personalized to your business and customer profile. This will ensure that the insights you receive aren’t just general customer data but can be put through the lens of the industry and business goals.
Integration with your existing systems
One of the biggest challenges in implementing such an instrument is Customer 360 integration with your existing ecosystem—CRM, ERP, support platforms, marketing tools, and so on. Even the most universal and well-managed platforms, like the ones we mentioned above, have their limitations in integrations.
However, when you decide to develop your own Customer 360 instrument, the question of a perfect technological fit can take a lot of resources, requiring the expertise of trustworthy developers.
Personalized analytics
You get to develop custom metrics built around your KPIs, customer segments, and business logic. During the development, leave room for change in case your business grows or your priorities change to make sure you can adjust each Customer 360 dashboard over time.
Custom workflows and automation
When building Customer 360 for your company, consider what processes you want to automate—loyalty triggers, lead scoring, or something else? This will ensure your team doesn’t spend time on objectives that don’t require human input. Closely collaborate with your development professionals during this stage.
Scalability and flexibility
Your business will scale over time, affecting your Customer 360 solution. That’s why it’s best to prepare in advance, which is easier to do with a custom-built platform and a team that considers this factor when finalizing a solution. Discuss the possibility of adding new data sources, features, and capabilities in the future.
Growing with Customer 360: the future ahead
Knowing your customer is the key to uncovering the hidden rooms in your business performance. Customer 360 gives you the data you can leverage for the company’s growth and to provide first-rate customer service. Before deciding whether you want a pre-built or customized solution, evaluate the viability. If you decide on the latter, identify your priorities for such an instrument. This will allow you to reach out to a development team with clear criteria.
Not sure where to start and whether your vision of Customer 360 fits your business capabilities? Reach out to us—we can help you from the start and develop a Customer 360 software perfectly tailored for you.
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About the author:
Alexey Shalimov, CEO at Eastern Peak
As CEO at Eastern Peak, a professional software consulting and development company, Alexey ensures top quality and cost-effective services to clients from all over the world. Alexey is also a founder and technology evangelist at several technology companies. Previously, as a CEO of the Gett (GetTaxi) technology company, Alexey was in charge of developing the revolutionary Gett service from ground up and deploying the operation across the globe from New York to London and Tel Aviv.
