What is Contextual Data and Why Does it Matter?

Strong customer relationships in the age of digital transformation aren’t a given. They require a thoughtful combination of EQ (Emotional Quotient) and TQ (Technical Quotient). But in most enterprises, customer data is siloed—gathered and stored separately in CRM, email, and calendar platforms—creating disconnects that hinder customer-facing teams. 

Enterprises in regulated industries are beginning to use increasingly sophisticated data operations to route customer data to the workflows that their sales and service teams use most – inboxes and calendars.  This means that the data must be curated and conditioned to make it “context-aware” so it can be automatically routed to the workflow their end-users deem most effective. When an advisor is answering an email, the right CRM data must be available at their fingertips to inform the reply. When booking a meeting, CRM data must be integrated into calendar views to ensure the right people get invited to meetings and that MNPI (material non-public information) is not inadvertently shared.

Sidebars like Salesforce’s Outlook Integration are beginning to bridge CRM and the major business communication platforms – so problem solved, right? Not quite. The difference is definitely in the details – and this is why contextual data matters.

The Only Sidebar That Delivers Compliant Customer-360

Enterprise IT teams face a high hurdle when it comes to finding the right sidebar to improve data quality and comprehensiveness in their CRM.

One inefficient task repeated across hundreds of employees can lead to a painful number of days of lost productivity by the end of the year. A delay in data sync between platforms can create more than frustration – it can create unnecessary friction in a customer relationship. Worst of all, displaying the wrong data to the wrong person inside your organization can put you on a regulator’s list creating fines and avoidable brand damage. 

Riva Insight is designed to boost the Technical Quotient of your customer-facing teams by delivering the right data to the right spot in their workflow. Our sidebar is context-aware, which means that the data we display from CRM shifts as a user moves through their screens. 

This eliminates task switching by shedding the burden of manually tracking (and re-entering) customer data from one platform to another. The time savings free up more time for advisors and revenue generators to prospect, follow up with strategic accounts, and win more deals. And because Riva syncs customer data with adherence to industry regulations in mind, you can rest easy that only those with the right permissions are getting the right access to your data. 

Surfacing Meaningful Data to Enhance Your Teams’ Productivity

One of Riva’s most compelling features is that it operates within the platforms customer-facing teams live and work in each and every day. Riva’s longstanding relationship with Salesforce and its demonstrated ability to integrate with platforms like Outlook and Google Workspace has made us a leader in customer data operations – able to tackle the enterprise challenges other connectors can not. Designed with a pass-through architecture, Riva works behind the scenes, connecting platforms, conditioning, and curating customer data—without storing it. Here are a few examples of the quiet power Riva brings to enterprise advisors and revenue generators: 

• Emails: Riva brings instant context to previous communications and activities like meetings—including customer needs details and who on your team is already interacting with that client and in what capacity. Riva also provides a well-organized view of customer conversations and email attachments across multiple CRM users, allowing easy access to conversation threads at the contract, account, opportunity, case, customizations, and custom object level. CRM users can see the initial email logged and click on it to drill into the subsequent emails in the thread, eliminating the need to store the growing email content in multiple individual emails in Salesforce. Rather than logging the entire thread each time, Riva logs only the most recent interaction, making it easy for customer-facing team members to get the Customer 360 view without wading through repetitive information.
• Meetings: Riva seamlessly integrates calendar events across multiple platforms to provide a Customer-360 view of client interactions from both CRM and email inboxes. This capability allows team members to surface meeting-related emails for easy identification of who’s involved when related meetings took place, and what was discussed and delegated. Through Riva’s real-time sync capabilities, key meeting data is at the right users’ fingertips where and when they need it to inform and support each customer’s journey. 
• Subject-Matter Expertise and Client Research: Riva’s data integration capabilities provide team members with immediate insights and details on each customer’s journey with the selling enterprise. Team members can perform in-depth due diligence to inform each customer interaction by learning which team members have had previous interactions with the prospect company—and even specific individuals—and what was discussed during those engagements.
• Data Quality = Trust in CRM: Riva instills confidence in customer-facing team members and customers by improving data quality. Advisors and revenue generators can rely on automatically updated customer data that’s free from gaps and errors resulting from manual re-entry or omission; compliance concerns are alleviated by Riva’s ongoing, industry-specific regulatory updates; and data security and privacy is protected by pass-through data integration that shares data between platforms—but never retains it. 

Riva’s unique set of tools offers the game-changing potential for stakeholders throughout the enterprise to exceed customer expectations—and deliver levels of service that can build long-term relationships. We invite you to discover more about Riva Insight here.