Customer 360 Will Make or Break Your AI Strategy

Marketers have long aspired to have a 360-degree view of every customer. With the advent of generative AI and LLMs, that dream must become a reality.  Customer 360 is the beating heart of any customer-centric enterprise and the foundation for anything you plan to do with AI. 

We can barely wrap our heads around the amount of data involved in every single customer interaction. Luckily, we’re marketers in the age of AI. In the not-so-distant future, we’ll know exactly who each consumer is, what they care about, and when they’re most open to hearing from us. We know data is the fuel for AI, and that there is no AI strategy without a data strategy. The customer 360 is where the abstract idea of AI optimization becomes very real.

Four keys to getting customer 360 right

1. Knock down the silos. 

Working with data is increasingly complex. Marketers have an endless ecosystem of enrichment tools, activation technologies, business intelligence and more to choose from. We have to stitch the broader picture together with a modern marketing data stack to power efficiencies. First, you unify your data and then you make sure that single source of truth powers the entire business. Beyond the marketing organization, customer 360 should inform all things AI, demand forecasting, supply chain management, headcount decisions and more. 

2. Use the data wisely. 

Personalization is a double-edged sword. People expect individualized experiences, but as marketers we have to work within the specific boundaries of what those people opt in for. We have too many options as consumers to settle for anything short of an excellent experience — we also demand the utmost privacy for our data. At Snowflake, one of our customers is amongst the largest fashion retailers in the world. They have mastered customer 360 to such a degree that they can predict exactly what shoe you are going to purchase based on your interactions with their company, and personalize your experience on their website accordingly. Balancing hyper-personalization and privacy is crucial, and impossible without customer 360.

3. Invest in data scientists on your marketing team. 

Recognize that data literacy is essential to every job in the enterprise. Every single person on your marketing team should get comfortable with data, from performance dashboards to generative AI. I think the biggest challenge at the moment isn’t technology — it’s really the know-how. Data scientists should sit on the team to truly understand the day-to-day challenges of marketing. That sets us up for success with all the gen AI opportunities to come. 

4. Build the right foundation. 

When we revised the Modern Marketing Data Stack this year, it was to make a clearer distinction between the foundational data technologies that every company needs, like data integration or business intelligence, and the marketing technologies that sit on top of them. If we want to meet prospective customers where they are, we need to predict what they want before they even know it themselves. 

Gen AI will make customer 360 indispensable

The power of generative AI in marketing is true personalization at the individual level — at scale and shifting in real time. Campaigns powered by your customer 360 will be created on the fly, with copy, images and even video custom-generated to appeal to a customer at a specific moment. This application of generative AI will be incredibly powerful, but it’s only possible if it’s backed by a holistic view of the customer.