Is a “single view of the customer” actually achievable or just a CX myth we keep chasing?

Something I’ve seen across retail and omnichannel teams: everyone talks about having a unified customer view, but most companies are still stitching together data from five different systems that barely talk to each other.

And that gap shows up everywhere in CX:

• Support can’t see the full journey
• Marketing and loyalty teams use different data
• In-store and online behaviour never line up
• Identity resolution is… optimistic at best

But in the few cases where I’ve seen it work (Voyado and Klaviyo, SMC), the impact on CX is huge:

There's less friction, more consistent experiences, and teams finally working from the same version of the truth.

So I’m curious:

Is a true single customer view realistic for most organisations, or is it something only a handful of companies can actually pull off?

Would love to hear what CX folks here are seeing in the real world.