I’m shopping for an apple keyboard right now. I’ve visited a national retailer’s store and their website, and even engaged in on-line chat with an associate. I received an email from that same store (I’m a reward member, so they know me). Can you guess what it was? Their weekly flyer. Not personalized at all. Well, to be fair the email did say “dear David”, but there was nothing in their about what I am shopping for. Why not?

Omni-channel personalization isn’t a new concept. It’s not a new desire. So why do so many organizations still struggle with it today? Like my philosophy professor told me, when solving complex problems, sometimes it is best to go back to base principles. So what is the base, the foundation, for omni-channel? It’s DATA.

Yeah, data. That old problem. It is the foundation of any initiative to better understand customers, analyze them, and treat them as individuals. But it is often overlooked. “I want to personalize interactions to customers so let’s work on the front end systems to power this initiative. Wait, does anyone have a good source of customer data? Ok, we can take a feed from MDM or a warehouse – that’ll do.”

Only it won’t ‘do’. That’s not good enough. Those systems don’t manage unstructured data – like my webchat interaction above. 80% of data is unstructured, and a lot of the new channels generate unstructured information about customers. They don’t really deliver the full “360 degree view” that you really need to personalize interactions. At best, they only deliver 72°.

Omni-channel Personalization needs a Customer 360. A full Customer 360. Want to learn more about how to get the #missing288degrees ? This Infographic explains how to deliver omnichannel from customer 360, and how to solve the problem of the #missing288degrees in detail. AllSight will help you find the missing 288 degrees of your customer 360.