NGDATA’s Co-Founder and CTO, Steven Noels, participated in CMSWire’s “Tweet Jam: CDPs and the Promise of Omnichannel Choreography.” The topics centered around: Customer data platforms emerged on the marketing landscape only a few years ago, but have since grown in both industry size and industry hype. Are CDPs the answer to fragmented customer data? How are businesses using them to improve the experiences they deliver their existing or would-be customers?
Take a look at the questions and Steven’s answers below:
1) Define customer data platforms. What do they need to have to be a “true” CDP?
True CDPs are data-driven, customer-centric, provide rich data ingest models and are powering insights by real-time intelligence… and go beyond digital sources and channels, of course! I see four CDP origin types: 1/ ex-DMP, 2/ ex-MDM, 3/ digital marketing platform, and 4/analytics-focused.
2) One of the selling points of CDPs is that it is managed by marketing. Does that a limit its uses and b. effectively create another internal silo?
We see data source integration aspects owned by IT, insights by analytics, and data usage and orchestration by marketing, customer service and business. It’s a central CDP – joint ownership.
3) What can companies do with a CDP that they can’t do with other systems?
If a CDP has built-in Next-Best-Action, you can finally achieve holistic, channel-agnostic out- and inbound customer interactions. CDPs don’t live in a channel, they orchestrate data and interactions across all.
4) How can a business assess if it needs a CDP or not?
Businesses should ask themselves whether they can measure ROMI and truly understand and treat their customers… as individuals. A most recent customer conversation: CDP as the intelligent data foundation to power smart IVR contact center call routines, like TSA Pre priority lines.
5) Where do CDPs fit in terms of regulations like the GDPR and California’s privacy law?
CDPs are central to complying with regulations, like GDPR, because CDPs enable companies to manage customer data from one place so they can easily/efficiently manage and enforce customer consent. Also, you can make GDPR an opportunity by tracking and engaging on upcoming consent expirations, and share derived insights with the customer, establishing trust through transparency. As an EU-built globally-delivered CDP, we, at NGDATA, cover it all.
