How marketers and customer service managers implement advanced analytics applications to enhance their customer relationship management system and compete in the marketplace
In the mobile operator world where saturation is reaching high levels, competition now focuses on effective customer service, which means effective communications.
We may consider a campaign as an intelligent way to communicate with our customers. So what do we need to conduct an effective one?
An important area to consider in your strategy and planning is the prediction of the business value of investments, such as advertising and incentives. Software tools enable organizations to increase their profit through more effective and efficient deployment of resources and lower risk associated with changes in the marketplace. Another area to consider is the need to plan, manage, and execute communications in an efficient and effective way.
It is critical to align activities and resources to strategies and goals, link performance to financial measures, and establish accountability throughout the organization. One thing you must do is to plan, test, and execute communication campaigns to improve automation, process efficiency, and consider return on investment (ROI).
This planning becomes more complicated when you consider the multiple channels available to communicate with customers: text messages, e-mails, calls, billboards, direct mails. The challenge is to deliver personalized multichannel digital content to your customers. To do this effectively, you must plan, prioritize, and optimize communications to maximize profits and customer satisfaction.
One way to do this is to use mathematical techniques to maximize campaign value. These techniques reveal how to make the most of each customer contact. They increase campaign ROI by determining the best offers for individuals and providing insight into the implications of changing business constraints, such as budget, channel capacity, and contact policies.
I often travel to the Dominican Republic on business. I have a right-hand man there named Santiago, who helps me keep track of spending by many different cost categorizations at a prominent mobile operator in Santo Domingo.
When my plane touched down on the bright black tarmac around noon, I immediately whipped out my phone to give Santiago a call. He didn’t answer so I sent him a text: “View key monetary measures associated with each marketing initiative.”
I was hoping that we would be able to generate forward-looking reports to show programs likely to be late.
Almost immediately, I heard my cell going off. I managed to answer it. It was Santiago. “Hallo, hallo. I am here at the office working on some customizable marketing dashboards that provide easy access to all relevant information for marketing and customer service teams and third-party vendors.”
I did not have time for small talk. “Great! Control which users can see specific information with permissions-based access features, OK?”
Santiago was on board. “You want me to enable users to customize their views and receive only information that is relevant to them?”
I wanted to get off the phone and get into a cab so I replied quickly, “Yes! With detailed marketing work flow capabilities, electronic notifications should be sent automatically to users when items or task lists require their attention.”
I thought about all of the work Santiago and I had ahead of us this week. I said, “We need timelines for projects and associated deliverables . . . everything calculated automatically based on current status or any changes made by the project manager. Our managers should be able to gain real-time visibility into the actual marketing project time line through status reports.”
The open road reminded me of streamlined approvals management. “We should electronically route marketing documents for review and approvals. Automate follow-ups with delayed reviewers. Consolidate reviewer comments and manage multiple revisions. Make sure to consolidate all communications both from marketing as well as with customer service. I know we are not in customer service, but we need to work with them!”
Once I got to the office, I ran up the stairs with my bags. Santiago met me at the door with a hug and a handshake, taking my bags from me. “Al, I have a robust financial management interface going. It defines and tracks marketing plans with a list of marketing and customer service programs to deliver integrated campaigns.”
This was excellent news. “Great! Does it manage the execution of marketing programs and the integrated campaigns?”
“Everything! Cost center budget allocation and forecasting for plans. Tracking message effectiveness, ROI, even artwork production when using printed copy.”
Wow. It was too good to be true! I took off my suit coat and went in for a closer look. “It even has visual configuration of artwork templates and enables instant feedback of artwork adaptation. Does it store final print-ready output? It seems that it enables routing for upper management approval and integration with digital asset management.”
DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT
Santiago was pleased with his work. “I included everything you told me about digital asset management. This system provides a secure interface for organizing marketing assets and enables comprehensive tagging and searching of marketing assets. Version numbers are automatically assigned as messages are created, enabling efficient version management.”
I said, “This rich media support will enable us to extract value from rich media assets. The remote cataloging and flexible access control will facilitate artwork to be submitted easily without requiring specialized tools or systems. That should save us some money!”
Santiago said, “As we both know, more marketing knowledge management will foster collaboration via moderated forums dedicated to specific subjects or projects. We will gain greater security by deploying access control and invitation to a topic. The document attachment support provides easier access to relevant materials. A personalized access to the existing marketing dashboard will enforce common access control rules to information. It all fits together perfectly.”
He continued, “The application has a site builder. It is used for site development for information sharing. This is so cool. It has the flexibility to manage content and layout while providing access control and collaborative site management. It can all be integrated with digital asset manager, message board, and an easy search-and-retrieval function.
“It is called Web decision making! The idea is to increase the value of our real-time customer interaction by integrating online customer behavior data with offline data for better decisions.”
SOCIAL MEDIA
I said: “Today, it is very important to integrate, analyze, and act on online conversations, such as LinkedIn, Yahoo!, Google, and Facebook. The appropriate handling of social media stuff is really critical.
Santiago eagerly agreed. “We need to review Web logs from the Web sites to optimize our Web site’s performance as well as understand customer behavior at our Web site. Another important component is to incorporate social network information into our existing models for churning, profiling, segmentation, and targeting.”
I opened up my computer and looked at some ideas I had been mulling over on the flight down.
I thought of a portal-driven dashboard to provide a single point for managing all our marketing activities and a checklist showing all tasks needed to complete each campaign, including an approval step that would require sign-off by designated individuals. These kinds of process-driven campaign flows, presented in a clear, uncluttered way, would speed and simplify simultaneous creation and management of multiple campaigns.
They would also have to incorporate various levels of authorization and let us share and link campaign diagrams. For example, Freddy Salazar, our chief information officer—and no one else—could maintain a do-not-contact policy that will update automatically and is incorporated into every communication. All system activities would be logged. This open approach to analytics will make it easier to complete audits and related activities.
Meanwhile, Santiago brought a few friends in from the office next door. One asked, “How intuitive is the tool and easy to learn/use?”
I told him the truth. “It is different from others. . . . It centers on statistics.”
Santiago interjected, “But isn’t it possible to organize and keep track of campaigns as discrete projects and by strategy, by product, by segment, by channel—all channels: traditional, e-mail, direct mail, social media channels—pretty easily?”
I beamed. “Yes. All channels. A campaign implementation schedule should be easy to load, import data, lists, list segmentation, data sources, and pick up any feedback—that is, data integrity issues to ensure campaigns are loaded on time, notes for sign-offs, and approvals in place.”
After the men left, I thought about more options.
Inputs: Are there scenarios available to allocate resources—by spending, channel allocation, contact frequency, and so on, to determine which scenario will achieve the best results?
I started typing up a wish list:
Visual work flow capabilities to give detail around tasks, time frames, dependencies, related assets, and user roles for all communication activities
A campaign calendar to provide a view into all customer communication activities scheduled over time, giving users quick insight into available resources
A solution’s digital library to give users the ability to quickly search, browse, and retrieve approved digital content through any Web browser
Lead generation and prospecting . . .
I stopped writing for a minute and wondered, “Is it necessary to have an accompanying customer relationship management lead generation and prospecting tool in place to complement (i.e., sales force, marketing, other) and send leads to field sales?”
So I wrote, “Use sales force,” assuming there would be access to the sales force.
I hadn’t gotten the chance to ask Santiago if there was a function for content and campaign elements—storage and reference materials for campaign history and future reference. Was there one for contact history and offer management by prospect/customer?
That could all be automatically done in the application.
What about course correction and the documentation of any changes to communications, their direction, and strategy based on marketplace changes or new information? Would the communications tool double as a project management tool? Can we react in real time? Would analytics functions such as multivariate testing and performance evaluation be possible within a single tool?
I was already feeling restless so I headed out to a restaurant to meet with Antonio Motolinia Hernandez, an old friend I had worked with in the Caribbean. I was excited to ask him what he thought about campaign management.
He laughed, scrunching up his nose, as soon as I asked him, then exclaimed, “Complete more campaigns/communications, faster! Get an automated, trackable, and easy-to-repeat process that helps you push more effective messages out the door faster to a smaller audience—from simple e-mail to text to calls to printouts that are more complex. Achieve better targeting and faster response rates. You see the pattern forming here. Speed! The key is to use unmatched analytical capabilities to yield insight for developing highly targeted segments based on purchase/response propensity, attrition potential, market basket analysis, profitability, credit scoring, and other models.”
He gave me a few pointers:
Focus on customers who matter most. With modeling insights into customer profitability and lifetime value, you can stay focused on the right customers rather than wasting time on those who won’t respond or be profitable.
Make continuous improvements in your communications. A reporting framework lets you measure, track, and analyze messaging so you can adjust as needed to continuously improve.
Coordinate across multiple channels. Select the channels most preferred by each of your customers, and coordinate communications across all of them.
Antonio stared at me across the white tablecloth. “For campaign tracking, you have to ask yourself, are analytics available for measuring and analyzing results? How about cross-channel attribution and marketing mix? Otherwise, what are you doing?”
The next day, I went into the office early, ready to get down to business again with Santiago. I kept typing up my worksheet, making a few changes in light of my conversation with Antonio.
I wanted to write about avoiding conflicting messages or offers being sent to prospects or customers. All different types of reports floated through my mind, begging to be acknowledged: dashboards and scorecards (interim ad hoc and other); ease of configuring, automated updating and maintenance; ease of use for reporting on campaigns.
I kept typing as Santiago came in, drowning his voice out with big data ideas:
Only through true optimization can mobile operators gain critical knowledge about factors that influence the success, or failure, of campaigns, such as adding a new channel, reducing a budget, or altering a customer contact policy.
Let’s not forget to use network data to leverage the customer experience.
Evaluate multiple campaigns simultaneously using mathematical optimization and predictive analytics to determine which products should be marketed to individual customers for maximum return.
Define objectives, change constraints, and rerun scenarios with different parameters quickly with an easy-to-use interface that makes even the more complex optimization processes intuitive and logical.
Create, view, and collaborate around optimization reports then feed the results into your software solution.
“Hey, Santiago! Data management, are you thinking customer, household, and/or campaign level? Data suppression rules? Feedback?”
“Al, what about these data integrity issues? I hate invalid e-mails. You should see the bounce rates on old e-mail addresses!”
“Old e-mails are the worst! Please come over here and help me with this.” We spent the rest of the day doing what we do best: planning communications, rain or shine.
