Getting it Right to 'Customer Rulers' in Real-Time

Source: TMCnet.com

When customers rule, can companies safely cross the drawbridge to appeal to the highnesses? Is it even worth while or safe to approach the realm, lest they face being tossed into the moat for their unwanted advances?

Or are there ways for enterprises to be heard, and granted audiences with the rulers and perhaps come away with sales? After all, even the most powerful royalty have to keep up their estates, grow their wealth and influence by increasing income, cutting costs, and bolstering security.

Mark Smith is executive vice president, sales and marketing, Portrait Software, which provides customer interaction management software. He reports that in today’s privacy-conscious world, it is rapidly becoming more difficult for marketers to reach their target audience. He points to Forrester Research work that shows that more than 65 percent of American adults have opted for inclusion on 'Do Not Call' lists, blocking marketing calls to home or mobile phones. Many potential customers also opt out from company e-mails, preventing marketers from contacting them electronically.

“In today’s marketing landscape, options such as these complicate the job of the marketer by dictating who they legally can and cannot contact, even within their own customer populations,” says Smith.

In cases like these, marketers are left with very few opportunities for customer contact, he points out. This means that capitalizing on opportunities when customers contact companies is more critical than ever before.

In short, the golden opportunity lies when their majesties summon you. They do track what is happening in their realms and beyond via trusted emissaries and messengers who report news with dispatch.

When a customer initiates an interaction - through contact centers, online, or at retail outlets - marketers must be prepared to make the most of the limited, and unanticipated, contact time, says Smith. To achieve this, marketers must have a 360 degree view of individual customers, as well as anticipate their wants and needs, so that they only respond to them with relevant marketing messages. The incorporation of predictive analytics into a customer interaction strategy provides the needed insight to ensure that marketers suggest only relevant products and services that benefit the customer, not the organization.

“Although basic CRM systems keep track of a customer’s previous contact history this is only the first aspect of understanding the customer’s needs,” explains Smith. “To serve the customer well, employees also need a 360° view of the customer, including their personal profile and buying preferences. Also even with a CRM system in place, the quality of the customer/employee interaction still depends on the staff and the extent of their training.

“Incorporating real-time decisioning software, driven by predictive analytics, into an existing CRM system changes the game. Intelligent analytics provides the ability to determine a customer’s propensity to respond to an up-sell or cross-sell offer and, together with real-time decisioning software, helps guide the interactions, advising precisely how to respond to customers and adapting to the interaction as it develops.”

Numerous corporations have already benefited from this approach, reports Smith. A major U.S. investment management company, for example, saw significant results after employing real-time decisioning software to optimize inbound marketing opportunities within its centralized contact center. Sales of new products through cross-sell more than doubled within the first week following the implementation, and incremental revenue averaged at $1.6 million per week over the first six months.

“Essentially, real-time decisioning does exactly what the name implies – it helps employees make the best marketing decisions in “real-time” throughout conversations with customers,” says Smith. “In that same vein, this technology also helps employees know what not to say, which is of equal importance. If a marketer attempts to push a product or service that is completely irrelevant to a customer’s needs, the customer will likely become annoyed, hang up, or in some cases take their business elsewhere.   Real-time decisioning, fuelled by intelligent analytics, reduces the variability in customers’ experiences and ensures that all employees are meeting service standards when communicating with customers, thus improving the customer experience and, in turn, increasing retention.”

Treating customers as individuals and catering to their specific needs is critical not only for inbound interactions, but in all marketing efforts and campaigns, Smith stresses. To anticipate a customer’s wants and needs from the outset will prevent ‘opting-out’ in the first place. If customers are confident that they will only be contacted with information that is completely pertinent to their needs, they are far more likely to keep their names on contact lists. It’s the irrelevant marketing contact that becomes a nuisance and provokes ‘opting out.’ With an intelligent, correctly-targeted approach, marketers will reduce the number of ‘opt outs’ in the first place and improve their chances of success by maintaining the power to reach out to customers.

“When customers add their names to ‘opt-out’ lists, they effectively take that power away from marketers and greatly reduce the organization’s opportunity to interact with them,” explains Smith. “Personalized, relevant and targeted campaigns prevent this from happening by making the customers feel as if they’re in control of the marketing they receive.”

Another approach to improving the customer experience is giving the opportunity to ‘opt down’ rather than ‘opt out’ completely from marketing contact, by use of preference management. This ensures that customers receive fewer messages from your organization, but the contact they do get is relevant to their needs and delivered via the right channel. In addition to improving customer satisfaction, this type of approach reduces marketing costs for companies by cutting down on resources and company time. It also increases campaign ROI because more targeted, relevant contact is more likely to yield positive results.

“Ensuring that marketing messages meet individual customers’ needs should always be a top priority for organizations,” says Smith. “Real-time decisioning software, fuelled by intelligent analytics, equips an organization with this much-needed insight and provides the information needed to keep all interaction completely relevant for each customer. Treating the customer as an individual in this way enables a company to capitalize on limited inbound marketing opportunities as well as to prevent ‘opt outs. Intelligent analytics give the marketer an unquestionable edge when interacting with customers, helping to ensure that every interaction is as successful and lucrative as possible.”