Play by the Rules with Customer Experience Management
at the data carefully, organizations can isolate events that could trigger outreach. The use of a bank card at one of those clothing stores on a Saturday might be one. The use of a bank card at an ATM machine in the same shopping mall might be another. Each event tells that a customer is in the shopping mall, and that insight presents an opportunity to consider what might be an appropriate service offer.
Time and transactions may not be the only factors to consider. For example, if the weather in a customer's location is poor, he/she might be very happy to receive an offer for discounted tickets to a matinee in the mall's movie theater that afternoon. The more information feeds, such as weather, that an organization can bring into the decision-making engine, the more relevant its outreach is likely to become and the more valuable its services will be to customers.
CEM: Bringing it all together to add value
Today's sophisticated CEM solutions offer a new way to analyze data and identify opportunities.
However, more than just a clear picture of historical events is required for value-added services. Yes, it's visible that a customer might have shopped at a certain mall in the past and then gone to a local restaurant for lunch if shopping on a Saturday, but if businesses want to reach out to that customer at the moment he is paying for a purchase at the mall on a Saturday—before that customer has committed himself to lunch—a CEM solution is needed to be able to see that mall visit as a triggering event. Organizations are increasingly relying on CEM solutions that can determine a specific offer or service to present—say, an offer to reserve a table at a favorite restaurant near the mall—and then will present this offer to the customer in real time.
Organizations should incorporate other real-time data streams into their CEM solution as well, such as social media commentary, news, and weather services, to enhance their ability to couple customer preferences and emerging opportunities. This enables businesses to track which offers customers accept and which they do not, giving them an added layer of customer understanding.
Ultimately, the combination of insight and tailored services enabled by CRM tools leads to increased average-revenue-per-user as well as increased customer retention. Customers are less likely to abandon a brand if they see it as much more than a commodity service provider. Moreover, the longer they stay with a brand, the more insight that business gains into their preferences and habits—and the more opportunity there is to present offers and experiences they will find attractive. This transforms businesses from commodity brands to cannot-do-without brands.
Theo Hildyard is the director of solution marketing at Software AG. He is responsible for the development of industry-specific business solutions with a special focus on use cases for real-time decisions and intelligent automated action on streaming data.