"Data quality is free. It’s not a gift, but it’s free. What costs money are the unquality things – all the actions that involve not getting data quality right the first time and all the actions to correct these data quality issues.”

These words uttered by Philip Crosby carry more weight today than ever before. 

With the GDPR dominating the headlines, organisations across the country have had to really think about their data protection under the ‘compliance’ agenda but for me, it goes much further than regulations and box-ticking exercises. 

As Chief Customer Officer, I frequently get asked what the most important part of the customer journey is and I genuinely believe the vital part rests on your data quality, way before the journey even begins.

You have to really care about the customer experience you create, that's where it starts, but the enabler is the data. Caring just isn't enough without good data and good process.

People are always shocked by this response but what surprises me is the sheer number of people who fail to connect data quality with the customer experience as it’s what streamlines our processes, enables us to meet our commitments and increases trust from our customers.

We are forever finding ways to improve the way in which we handle our own data quality and were recently awarded the Cyber Essentials PLUS certificate. This is a huge achievement for us as a business and provides further evidence that we are serious about protecting our customers data and they can trust us do to so.

I’d love to hear your opinions on data quality – do you agree it is essential for a great customer experience?