Thinking About Implementing a Enterprise Preference Management Solution? 5 Things to Know

Type: Blog
Topic: Customer Experience

If you’re thinking about implementing an enterprise preference management solution (which you should! Research shows that you can reduce global opt-outs by up to 77% when you enable opt-ins according to customer preferences!), there are several critical functions and features that should be included:

1. Preference management should be a central repository connected to all departments, units, regions and appropriate applications. Effective engagement is all about listening to and learning from your audience. If information isn’t easily available across the enterprise, customers will be lost through repetition, contradiction and frustration with a business that doesn’t seem to remember what they want.
2. Preference collection should take place across the full spectrum of prospect and customer interactions. Enterprise-level businesses engage in complex interactions that often feature an expanding set of personal and virtual interactions. It’s essential to collect and react to information from all touchpoints such as call centers, social media and mobile devices, not just the easy or inexpensive ones e.g. email or websites.
3. Preference data should be made available through existing applications to streamline 
access. Ideally, a preference data should be made available inside sales applications, 
support systems and marketing databases so your team can use the best and most 
appropriate tools for the interaction at hand. An outside application that requires 
secondary research or recording slows productivity and leads to cross-discipline 
confusion.
4. Preference management processes should be flexible enough to incorporate new applications, transition to new CRM systems and integrate with a variety of data sources and activities. If your preference management strategy is inextricably tied to (or built as part of) a specific application, it will only be as useful as the life of that application or CRM system. It’s a time-bomb approach that creates an even more painful transition when the time for a transition inevitably arrives.
5. Preference collection, maintenance and distribution should be tailored to your unique business rules and circumstances, not pre-set features and outputs. In order to truly own and capitalize on engagement, preference management must align with your unique structure, needs and sensitivities. A solution that limits your collection points or 
predetermines how and when information is shared can shift overall strategy and conflict with overall aims and benchmarks.

If you have questions or need more detail, please contact us! We’re happy to help discuss your options with you.

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