Customer engagement is a new competitive differentiator, and the key to making sure each and every customer interaction is compelling and individualized is customer data. Yet, simply collecting data from your customers will not go very far in improving customer experience. The way to transform data into a powerful engagement tool begins with aggregating identity-centric customer data into a comprehensive profile.
A customer profile consisting of data from different data sources unified into a single view of the customer is crucial to being able to provide personalized experiences. It not only offers insight into a customer’s buying patterns, it allows you to capture and enforce preference data, privacy choices and security policies with every interaction.
With the many data management technologies available, it can be hard to narrow down the capabilities and features that support 1:1 personalized customer engagement to set your organization apart from the competition, even in the face of disruptive technologies.
An identity and preference management platform can accelerate your digital business strategy by managing identity-centric customer data in addition to enabling other important identity management functionalities such as social login, adaptive authentication, and self-service account management. A few of the key features to look for are:
- Structured and Unstructured Data Management
Look for a solution that supports the management of customer profiles consisting of both structured and unstructured data. A solution that leverages JSON over REST APIs can define the structure of attributes and data with no required schema definition. - Data Governance Policies That Evaluate External Data
Governing access to sensitive identity data, whether it is internal or sourced externally from a third party, is critical to successfully managing and securing customer profiles. A solution that provides centralized, fine-grain policy controls can help ensure compliance with regulations and corporate mandates as well as individual consent. - Easy Password Management Implementation
Password management that is simple for development teams to deploy is important for customer experience and fast time to market. Consider a solution with password management APIs. - Simple Management
IT teams are busy so having a solution that is simple to operate can save time and money. Look for an identity and preference management platform that features Intuitive instrumentation and operational visibility with integrated management consoles. - SCIM 2.0 Support
Support for the industry standard SCIM 2.0 protocols helps developers more easily manage and leverage identity data by enabling more control over data types, data relationships and data filters. - Support for Third Party Tokens
Integration with proprietary identity providers, including Facebook, Google and other OpenID Connect compliant providers, enables social login as well as using this data to augment your internal data and build more complete customer profiles.
There are many factors to consider as you plan an identity and preference management implementation to help your IT team meet digital customer engagement requirements. Including these features in your solution criteria can facilitate the success of your identity-centric business strategies.