The Great Data Debate – To Share or Not to Share

True story: I use the services of a company that I have a long-standing relationship with. Recently, this company was purchased. The new owners of the company have decided to limit the amount of customer information an employee can access when working with a customer. Each employee is given the bare-bones minimum to provide the services the customer has requested FOR THAT DAY. Employees are not given information about past customer requests, preferences, purchases or history. And yet, employees are expected to take detailed notes on their interactions with customers so that the customer information can be captured and stored.

The result is that it is virtually impossible for the employee to provide an exceptional experience for the customer. That’s not to say that the employees don’t provide good service and work – they do – but without having access to more customer information, it is very difficult for them to make recommendations of additional products or services the customer could use since the employees can’t see what had been offered or suggested in the past.

And, it is virtually impossible for an employee to know which customers deserve preferential treatment because of their value to the organization. Case in point: one customer – let’s call her “Sue” – called up this company to reschedule an appointment she had. The receptionist didn’t have access to Sue’s information, so she didn’t know that Sue was an extremely valuable customer who had also referred a number of new customers to them. The receptionist was unwilling to make any time concessions to Sue. Sue was very frustrated – because she knew how valuable a customer she was – and moved her business to a competitor.

This type of situation could easily be avoided if employees had access to the right customer data that would help them do their job better – and improve the customer experience. If the receptionist knew that Sue was a very valuable customer, she would have been more willing to be flexible on the appointment time. If the day-to-day contacts knew the past customer requests, preferences, and history, those employees would be able to sell even more products and services to customers.

Why don’t these new owners want their employees to have access to customer data? They’re afraid. They’re afraid if they share too much information with their employees that the employees will be in a more powerful position than the owners are. Or that if one of their employees left, some customers would follow that employee to a competitor. Or that the cost to serve customers might go up. Or…or…or – there could be dozens of reasons why.

But, the bottom line is: when you withhold important customer data from your employees that provide services to those customers, you are reducing your bottom line.