What's Your Data Collection Strategy?
18 Questions to Align Your Organization
If you could collect every piece of data on customer interactions, would you?
If you answered “Yes,” we need to talk.
Because when it comes to customer data, more doesn’t always mean better. In fact, you could be making an expensive mistake by collecting a trove of information without a sound strategy in place. Many business fall into this trap: data sets are identified and collected simply because information is there to gather. The truth is the majority of this data serves no purpose. Quite often it’s redundant several times over. In addition, significant expense is paid to store this data, and still more money is spent to identify use cases and value.
Don’t waste time, dollars or energy sorting through information you never needed in the first place. Use the following framework to guide your internal discussions and to set your organization up for success.
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Share the answers with your data stakeholders, or use the questions to kickstart a team brainstorming exercise.
Every single data point should have a determined purpose before it is collected.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- How will the data be utilized?
- From where will the data be collected?
- What tools or technologies are needed for collection?
- Is any transformation of the data required?
- Where will the data be stored?
- In what format will the data be stored?
- What tools or technologies are required to store the data?
- Will this data need to be joined or merged with any other data sets? If so, what are the keys?
- What are the implications if this data is not collected?
Collecting data without purpose can create unjustified latency and other unwanted side effects.
Consider the following:
- How will the data improve your understanding of the customer?
- How will you connect digital and offline data?
- How will the data be connected back to the individual customer?
- How will it help you see the whole customer journey?
- How can the data be used to solve business problems like measurement, engagement and personalization?
Finally, before the execution of any data collection strategy, answer these questions:
- When will the data start being collected?
- When will the data first be used for its determined purposes?
- For how long will the data be used?
- For how long should the data be stored?
Just because data can be collected on virtually everything does not mean that data should be collected on everything. Knowing the answers to the questions above ensures the right data is collected to build a customer intelligence practice that grows with your business.