How to Effectively Desilo Data to Harmonize Your Brand

Anyone who works in customer experience (CX) has heard about the importance of desiloing data (if they’re not already leading efforts to do so). That process has become one of the most popular elements of the CX world as companies strive to integrate data sets, processes, and departments to serve a more unified experience vision.

Desiloing data is generally accepted as a great goal, but executing that goal is no small task. It’s natural for CX practitioners to wonder where to start. Which data sources should they integrate? How exactly is data desiloed? Finally, how can organizations begin using integrated data to achieve CX goals?

Taking Stock

Which data sources should organizations desilo to gain a better view of their CX efforts? The first and most obvious here is direct feedback from customers. Once brands have accrued that set of information, they can look to indirect feedback from customers and other groups. Finally, brands need to unite these sets of data with inferred feedback, descriptive data that can help organizations achieve a united, holistic picture of the customer experience.

Next, practitioners need to understand that their richest source of information about the customer experience lies in the minds of their frontline employees.  This is an often overlooked aspect of CX data and should be a priority.  Employees’ feelings about a brand are just as crucial a component of any company’s experience efforts as customers’, so it pays to include those insights in a desiloed system as well. CRM data is extremely helpful, too—organizations should desilo as much of their customer strategies, technology, and interaction analyses as possible.

There are two more sets of data here that are essential to include in a centralized data system: financial data and operational information. It’s common for organizations to assume that the only data needed for a decentralized CX system is info from customer-facing teams, but operational data is key to understanding a brand’s wider picture. Combine this info with the aforementioned customer data, and the result is a truly versatile and powerful source of knowledge.

Opening The Floodgates

Once a brand has located these data sources, it’s time to begin the process of actually desiloing them. It’s essential for CX practitioners to bear two key principles in mind as they go about this project: efficiency and accessibility.

Efficient data desiloing isn’t as simple as just dumping a bunch of files into a single folder. Organizations that desilo information can attain a cross-functional communication strategy that enables all its departments to take advantage of that data in meaningful ways. CX practitioners should thus strive to be the champions of this data and use it to demonstrate how other departments can benefit from it, not just CX and customer-facing teams.

Fortunately, brands that put their data in one place have largely achieved that cross-functionality with just that action. However, organization goes a long way toward accessibility, too. Keeping a data system in good order means making everything from data source names to file organization intuitive. Organizations that pull this off can better leverage their data to accomplish CX goals.

Executing On Desiloed Data

There are many benefits to desiloing data. Brands that unite disparate sources of information can help ensure that CX data is used throughout an entire organization. This can help brands create a culture of CX centricity (sometimes referred to as closing the outer loop) that makes the company geared toward finding feedback, resolving issues, and implementing actionable insights.

This increased unity in purpose ultimately leads to an improved customer experience. When departments share information and can draw data from one place, it’s easier to accomplish CX goals and to fix problem areas. Thus, desiloing data is a boon not just for brands and organizations, but also the customers for whom those companies seek to create memorable, compelling experiences.

Interested in learning more about making the most of your data and the tools with which you gather it? Check out our article on how to achieve meaningful customer listening here!