Counting the cost of poor quality customer data
New research from Royal Mail Data Services, the specialist data business of Royal Mail Group, has revealed that poor-quality customer contact data could be costing UK organisations as much as 6% of annual revenues. This was one of the key findings from Royal Mail Data Services’ third annual research report, The Six Per Cent Solution = How Better Customer Data Drives Marketing Performance and Business Growth.
Furthermore, it appears that specific data issues have continued to rise since the first annual report in 2014: notably, duplicate data (which has increased 22% in the last two years), incomplete data (up 13%) and out-of-date data (up 12%).
This year’s survey also revealed that 37% of businesses lack any formal processes for cleansing their data, and nearly one in five (19%) do not validate customer contact data at the point of data capture.
More than a third (38%) of marketing, data and analytics professionals say their efforts to overcome these challenges and improve the quality of customer contact data are thwarted by legacy IT systems. This can also limit or even prevent the level of personalisation which marketing is able to deploy, said Royal Mail.
Jim Conning, Managing Director, Royal Mail Data Services, commented: “Our study has revealed that poor-quality customer contact data directly impacts the bottom line. Especially as one in five customers need to be replaced each year. Marketers need to work harder to build value in the minds of their customers and stop them from moving on to a new brand or provider. Good-quality customer contact data is critical to tackling both these challenges.
“The lack of consensus within organisations about how to approach the data problem is holding them back. Breaking down silos and ensuring that marketing, data and IT work together to tackle the data-quality challenge should be top of the agenda for any business.”
