A single customer view is an aggregated, consistent and holistic[1] representation of the data held by an organisation about its customers[2][3] that can be viewed in one place, such as a single page.
[4] The advantage to an organisation of attaining this unified view comes from the ability it gives to analyse past behaviour in order to better target and personalise future customer interactions.
[6] However, some commentators have challenged the idea that a single view of customers across an entire organisation is either natural or meaningful, proposing that the priority should instead be consistency between the multiple views that arise in different contexts.
As such, the acquisition by an organisation of a single customer view is one potential outcome of successful master data management.
Since 31 December, 2010, maintaining a single customer view, and submitting it within 72 hours, has become mandatory for financial institutions in the United Kingdom due to new rules introduced by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.