Navigating the Shifting Challenges and Opportunities of Customer Data

Chris: [00:00:00] All right, welcome to another Data Driven Podcast. I'm Chris Detzel, and today we have a couple of special guests, or one host, and then also a special guest. So let me introduce Venki Subramanian. He's the Senior VP of Product at Reltio. I'm doing great, Chris. How are you? Doing well. Welcome back. We also have Tim Hayden.

Chris: Tim Hayden is the CEO and founder of Braintrust. Tim, how are you today?

Tim Hayden: Hey, doing great, Chris. It's great to be here with you and Venki. Thanks.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, it's great to be here with you as well and really excited about this. And today our topic is around navigating the shifting challenges and opportunities of customer data.

Chris Detzel: And today I'm going to hand the reins over to Venki and let him start the discussion.

Venki, go ahead.

Venki Subramanian: Thank you, Chris. I know you normally do the, play the host. I like to do that today and hoping to have a great conversation with you Tim. First of all, maybe why don't you just give us a little bit of a background about [00:01:00] yourself and brain trust?

Tim Hayden: Sure. I appreciate that. Thank you. No for the last 20 years, I've owned agencies. I've worked for agencies. I've be marketing or. Different types of marketing agencies, communications agencies, but then also software companies started a few work for a few and a brain trust since 2016, we have been in the world of customer data platforms and data management, helping brands build that single source of truth or that three 60 view of customers.

Tim Hayden: And of course, a long list of things that enables, which I'm sure we may talk about.
Venki Subramanian: Yeah, absolutely. So you have a ton of experience in this topic that we are going to talk about today, which is around customer data, customer 360, customer data platforms. Why are we having this conversation today, Tim?

Venki Subramanian: We've been at this problem. We've seen companies try to solve their customer data problem for a very long time, probably for over decades. And we're still talking about it. And [00:02:00] there's a very relevant topic today. So what, according to you, are still the biggest challenges of the unsolved problems?

Venki Subramanian: And the reason why we are still having a conversation about customer data and customer 360 today.

Tim Hayden: I think there's a couple of ways to look at that. And I, the probably the preeminent one. Is this use of the term omni channel to understand that we've had this proliferation of micro casting micro casting, meaning the fragmentation of the media place whether that's where we were 15 to 17 years ago with the advent of on one side, social networks and on the other side, smartphone use.

Tim Hayden: And obviously having multiple mobile apps and multiple ways through the website, through email, through texting, through anything that would happen with social networks. And then, of course, what comes with that is a media marketplace your ability to aspirationally meet the [00:03:00] customer where they are at the right time, the right person.

Tim Hayden: Why are we still having this conversation? It's because there's that which you can't control and that, that is that the market is always changing, right? The market is always moving much faster than many companies can be prepared. To stay aligned with it. So there's that as table space as table stakes.

Tim Hayden: And the other side of it is that so many companies still manage all of the customer data. They have very disparately. They have it in countless systems. As I know, you and I can giggle a little bit about it. They have the same customer who is Bob, Robert, Bobby that MasterCard and that iPhone and that WiFi router IP address that, may exist in 17 different divisions, departments or business units and the systems they use.

Tim Hayden: With that, if a company is trying to keep up, or at least. Stay adjacently abreast of that [00:04:00] fragmentation and the speed at which media is changing. They have a whole lot of work to do at home just to be able to get that view. So it's a requirement right now. It's a, and it's been a requirement for years.

Tim Hayden: As you've already said.

Venki Subramanian: Yeah so true. And I know I, I think you touched upon a couple of different points, very important points there. I just want to highlight, one is from a customer perspective, the growing expectations, especially with, more and more people being digital natives, the expectation of a seamless experience, no matter how I'm interacting with a company, whether it's through phone chat website, mobile applications in person, any of those things, the customer expectations are sky high.

Venki Subramanian: That the company knows me as a person knows the context in which I'm having a conversation with an engagement with right. You've mentioned Omnichannel. That's the driving force and it has been a driving force for some time. And on the flip side, you also talked about how companies are struggling with multiple different systems, a growing system landscape of proliferation [00:05:00] of different applications and experiences that they need now need to manage.

Venki Subramanian: You talked about how Rob and Bob or Robert might exist in 17 systems. When we look at the typical enterprise, we are probably looking at 700 systems, right? Where customer data might exist inside the system landscape. So I think both of those are extremely important aspects. And I think that's probably why the topic of customer 360 and how companies Need to look at it to solve for scale and for that omnichannel experience is still a very relevant conversation today.

Venki Subramanian: So really touching on both of those things.

Tim Hayden: You bet, Vicky and it's, it is all that. And then I think we'd be remiss not to mention what the pandemic by itself, but. The speed at which digitization happened during that time frame, maybe it wasn't all because of the pandemic.

Tim Hayden: It may have been just where priorities and urgencies accelerated in other directions. But when people think about having [00:06:00] a 360 view, when they think about having that holistic golden customer record. The reason they must is because it's not just media data and it's not just marketing data anymore, but it is that which involves supply chain logistics, fulfillment product fulfillment and product delivery all of that.

Tim Hayden: It's it's a matter of thinking of the customer experience in the business operation much more holistically. Wouldn't you agree?

Venki Subramanian: Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, one of the customers we work with is is one of the largest providers of computer peripherals. And they are trying to or they have moved successfully to a subscription based model for their printers and ink cartridges and other things.

Venki Subramanian: And if you look at it from their perspective for them, a customer 360 is not just about the information about the customer or where this person lives. What that's not enough. They want to understand what kind of products do they own? What kind of subscriptions do they have? What [00:07:00] kind of service requests might they, might they have that needs to be addressed maybe even proactively, right?

Venki Subramanian: Even before an issue happens. And you can see that as not just in the B2C space, even on the B2B side, or more and more businesses are moving towards that subscription, the outcome driven businesses as opposed to you're buying a device from me. And it is a very transactional relationship. So I agree.

Tim Hayden: Definitely. Definitely. And I think that's you and you could name any industry where that is the case, right? We do quite a bit of work in retail automotive, right? And as an industry, the car business has probably over the last 20 years, has really moved into a very top of funnel, transactional business.

Tim Hayden: And it's actually become a dichotomy of operations with the variable operation, which is what most of us are familiar with the sales side the showroom floor the finance and insurance process. But there's also the life of your [00:08:00] relationship with the vehicle, the dealer and over time what you're doing on the fixed off side, right?

Tim Hayden: Which is repair orders. It's general maintenance of warranty claims. All of them. And I think you hit the nail on the head when you were talking about peripherals is more and more businesses. It's not just a matter of having the holistic view of the customer record, but it is the ability to look at the relationship between product location, employee, customer, all of these things have correlational and causal relationships.

Tim Hayden: And I'd be interested to see, what are your thoughts on that? Because that's. That's that to me is where we get into very fascinating views of what's working what's not working and what needs to be improved or optimized. Absolutely.

Venki Subramanian: Absolutely. I think one of the things that I would highlight there is the traditional approach of looking at a customer 360 as that narrow slice or even when I look at some of the customer data platforms out there looking at just the customer [00:09:00] data, even if you were to extend that to the B to B side, right?

Venki Subramanian: The organizations and people that companies work with is not sufficient any longer. You need for any company to provide a effective, seamless experience to customers across channels and across different touchpoints. It's important to understand the full context. So a customer 360 buys definition needs to have the information about the relationship between different entities, like customer, their products, locations, and others.

Venki Subramanian: And it also needs to understand the behavioral data about customers, right? What are they doing? In fact, one of the ways I, we look at it Tim and I would like to hear your thoughts on this is the customer 360 need to definitely start with the, who, who is the customer or the party or the entity that you're interacting with, whether it's an organization or a person, it also needs to have the, what, which looks a little bit into the rear view mirror into what kind of activities has this customer done with us.

Venki Subramanian: But it needs to also [00:10:00] extend a little bit into the future as in what actions can it then drive? Because if it is just a, an analytical view of things that has happened in the past and not driving actions from there into the future, like things like what is the next action that I need to take? We talk about next best action kind of things in the context of omni channel engagement,
Tim Hayden: right?

Venki Subramanian: But I would argue that needs to be all of those pieces, the who, the what has happened in the past, what needs to happen now. All of those aspects need to come together to make customer 360 a worthwhile investment for any company.

Tim Hayden: Totally. I think, um, and we can think about that in 2 respects.

Tim Hayden: 1 is. The velocity and the speed at which business takes place today, right? Is your ability to make faster decisions to the point you just made about next best action, right? If the larger the organization is, the more the more patterns you're gonna be able to recognize over [00:11:00] time to be able to understand the customer who did a visited B and bought C.
Tim Hayden: And another group or cohort who has either visited B and done a right to automatically put C in front of them to automatically in the case of some brands, just to send it to their house, right? Or to know when they pull up to pick something up, whether that's Whether they're coming visiting a retail location or they're doing curbside delivery.

Tim Hayden: Just adding a little extra something to their bag because. People who bought the things that they have in their bag also bought this 1 thing that they just didn't happen to buy. We're going to give it to him. Anyway. I think that's years ago, people would have called that surprise and delight and it just would have been the hunch or that which was observational today.

Tim Hayden: We have the ability Through technologies such as customer data platforms and master data management, that you can work in tandem with [00:12:00] each other or sometimes by themselves to deliver an insight to put you in a position to do that. Really to really wow the customer. And and better than that, put you in a position to be much more accurate with your forecasting, much more accurate with your planning which I think are not always the same thing,

Venki Subramanian: right?
Venki Subramanian: Right?

Tim Hayden: Yeah.

Venki Subramanian: So I think we've touched upon a few very important points in the conversation so far focusing on why this is important for companies to look at and, different aspects they need to consider. Let's get a little bit more specific, Tim, about the data aspects, right?

Venki Subramanian: Sure. What role does data quality and trust play in making customer data actionable? What is your experience? What has your experience been in that space?

Tim Hayden: When you go through the implementation of a platform on the front end, before you even start to use it if we're talking about master data management, we're talking about a customer data platform [00:13:00] that is informed or enabled by master data management in both situations, we have the opportunity to do the simplest things in terms of field matching is to make sure that in in the parent and the parent system, which becomes master data management.

Tim Hayden: How are we ensuring that it understands all of the fields that exist across a sea of to the point you made earlier? Not just tens, but hundreds of other systems that exist in the organization, how we make sure there's fluidity there as well for the obvious to make sure that any user is not confused about data that's uncategorized or or that wasn't ingested or computed process in the same way everything else was right.

Tim Hayden: Simple table stakes, things like that in terms of. Getting data ready and then once it's in the system to verify that the data is [00:14:00] operational to make sure that it is coming through the way you want it to. It's, it's being displayed. It's being published in the way that you want it to.
Tim Hayden: I think that's another thing that a lot of folks don't really think about. They don't. I like to say don't pay too much mind to that because. They think these are magic black boxes and they're not right. We've got to even with schema, let's ETL, even with where we've graduated this level where we don't have to do data prep necessarily.

Tim Hayden: We don't have to invest in a in a system. That takes weeks to get the data ready. But even without that requirement, we have to get we have to not only make sure that the data is of sound quality that we're bringing in, but we also have to ensure that we can verify that it's operational and that it does what it needs to do.

Tim Hayden: And that means different things for different systems. It means certainly means different things for what you're using at the end point solutions. But in [00:15:00] terms of the M. D. M. I'll bounce it right back to you. I think data quality means something different to everyone.

Tim Hayden: Absolutely. Is there a way you look at that? Is there a way that you specifically are are addressing data quality at RealTO?

Venki Subramanian: Absolutely. I'll first let me even before I answer the RealTO part of it and how we help customers. Let me give you my point of view as a customer, right? As as a consumer.

Venki Subramanian: There is a large airlines and I'm part of their loyalty program. I must have signed up in two different, at two different times with two different email addresses. But every time there is a marketing campaign, they execute, they send me a flyer or something or a brochure or some marketing material.

Venki Subramanian: I get two letters from them to my house address, the same exact address. With one address to Venki Subramanian and the other one address to Venki Subramanian, right? Just look at that from an experience point of view for me as a customer. All it tells me is this company does not know me. They don't care enough to know me, right?

Venki Subramanian: And [00:16:00] the translating that into real cost, of course, the quality, the data quality issue is not an expensive one, right? They're not making a huge mistake by sending me two of the marketing materials, but there is a real cost associated with it. They are wasting their money by sending me two. exact same pieces of content to my home address.

Venki Subramanian: Even if you're looking at, a few cents that might cause them to do that. When you look at a large scale, when you look at the, this company doing business with maybe 60, 70 million customers, those kinds of costs can add up. So that is a real cost to data quality here from a customer data perspective.

Venki Subramanian: And if you extend that to some other industries where a cost of data quality could be even more significant, just look at it, and imagine an insurance scenario or a financial services institution that does not get Information, right? And they're sending wrong information to the wrong person.

Venki Subramanian: Now you're talking about significantly higher cost of data quality, right? So this is not a nice to have. I would argue that data quality is a must have for you to [00:17:00] ensure good customer experience and some other cases when it is compliance related, it is an absolute must have to have, that high quality data.

Venki Subramanian: That is why Reltio as a company, when we work with customers on their customer 360 customer data initiatives. We put that quality at its center, understanding the different input sources in terms of deduplicating the data and also in terms of enriching that information from third party sources.

Venki Subramanian: And that has to be for the reasons I explained for the example that I gave has to be front and center.

Tim Hayden: It definitely

Venki Subramanian: brings me to, to the point about compliance and privacy regulations Tim, how do
privacy regulations like GDPR, CCPA, impact on how companies approach their customer data and implement a 360.

Tim Hayden: I think let's these laws all pretty much share the same five tenants, right? Which is the consumer or the customer now has a right to see their data to [00:18:00] correct their data, to ask you to pause using it, to ask you to not sell it and ultimately to say, delete it to remove it, right?

Tim Hayden: Or the freedom to be forgotten. And to, to the point you made about two emails if an anecdotal story I'll just quickly deliver is a certain retailer that I'll, this shall remain nameless that my wife shops with. Every Christmas, she gets 7 catalogs and those 7 catalogs. When you look at the address labels, you can see that some of them have her middle initial.

Tim Hayden: Some have an extra space. Some have her 1st name misspelled. And you just, and you and I know, because we're in the business, right? If we say, I know what they don't have, I know what they, or if they do have, they're not using it. It could be a number of things. It's not let's not always assume that they haven't invested and attempted to do it.

Tim Hayden: But. They lack that. And that that puts that retailer in that situation. They're highly susceptible to what happens [00:19:00] this June and July of 2024, where there are 13, 14 states that will have their own data privacy laws. The FTC with data safeguards rule and a merchandise list of other laws or rules.

Tim Hayden: Pardon me. FTC doesn't do laws. They do rules. The rules in terms of what people can and can't do with their data. And if you're having those kinds of issues that we, as the customer can see on the hygiene side of things that we, if we can see that there's a data hygiene challenge on our end.

Tim Hayden: Just wait until there's billboards on the side of the highway. They'd invite us to class action litigation to go after companies that are sloppy with their data management. So compliance is not just something that. Is any more a box to check? And it has everything to do with privacy. It has everything to do with security.

Tim Hayden: And to the point, I think we both made it has everything to do with having happy customers.

Venki Subramanian: Absolutely. Chris, I [00:20:00] think at this point, I would want to welcome you back into the conversation. We were just getting started there. How do we continue this conversation?

Chris: I think we'll have a part two.

Chris: We'll get that scheduled as soon as possible. But until then, Tim Venke, what a great conversation. I feel like we just didn't dive in enough, but today that's all we have time for. So thank you for everyone for tuning in on today's data driven podcast. I'm Chris Detzel, and please go rate and review us.
Chris: Thank you everyone. Bye bye.

Venki Subramanian: Thank you.