In this chapter, we are going to explore how getting to know your customer, otherwise known as KYC, and subsequently storing and representing the relevant customer data in your CRM system, can improve operational efficiency, reduce the cost of operations, and improve customer satisfaction. Understanding your customer through maintaining and managing the relevant customer information is at the heart of any successful business and CRM strategy. In fact, it's safe to say that customer knowledge is the essential ingredient to a business being successful.

Building a single, sophisticated, role-based, 360-degree customer view that can capture, process, and present all the relevant relationship data is at the heart of understanding and knowing your customer. This is a central repository and, in this case, data access is based on the role and power that a user has in the organization.

This data could cover anything...