IBM Software Maximizing customer value in the digital age

Transcription

1 IBM Software Maximizing customer value in the digital age How to use comprehensive customer analytics to meet five critical business needs

2 Introduction Getting a complete view of the customer Five critical needs for business success Gaining deeper insight with contextually related Customer analytics competency: A must-have for business growth Resources

3 Introduction: Gain deeper understanding of your customers to achieve higher lifetime customer value To successfully compete in today s digital environment, organizations must aim for a coherent presence across all interaction channels. Regardless of the medium through which they contact you, your customers expect an engaging experience and consistent, personalized service. Failure to meet these standards can have significant repercussions. With the rapid adoption of social media, one poor customer experience can quickly go viral, potentially damaging your brand and bottom line. A 2013 IBM study of marketing professionals found that brands experience about USD83 billion in lost sales in the US each year due to bad or inconsistent customer experiences. 1 In many cases, organizations aren t even aware of these unpleasant experiences; according to another IBM study, only about 1 in 10 US adults contact the company directly after a poor or very poor experience using a website or mobile application Introduction 2 Getting a complete view

4 With competitors just a click away, understanding customer behavior, engaging customers in meaningful interactions and delivering an outstanding customer experience across all touch points have never been more critical. Organizations need visibility and insight to answer the most difficult questions that plague marketing, e-commerce and customer service departments: Why are my conversion rates down? Where do customers struggle and what causes them to leave? Are we reaching our intended audiences? Who are my most profitable customers and what are their preferences? How can I target customers with more relevant offers? How do I prevent customer churn? This e-book explores strategies and best practices that can help your organization meet and solve five customer-centric business challenges through smart application of customer analytics. Mobile experiences matter With a majority of consumers now owning and using mobile devices, the mobile experience has a direct effect on their decision to do business with you. Here s a look at why mobile matters to your organization and how things can quickly turn negative if your customers do not have a good mobile experience. 44% of US adults will visit a website or use an app more frequently after having an excellent experience, and 33% will recommend the site or app to others. Only 25% of US adults say their experiences using websites or mobile applications on tablets are excellent. As few as 18% say their experiences using websites or mobile applications on smartphones are excellent Introduction 2 Getting a complete view

5 Getting a complete view Knowing what techniques and tools to use to improve customer satisfaction is imperative to stay ahead of your competition. But acquiring the right capabilities can be tricky. A common problem in many organizations is that each department works in its own separate silo to solve customer engagement and online transaction issues. This compartmentalized approach does not provide the comprehensive visibility and insight you need to not only create ongoing customer engagement across channels, but also to maintain loyalty, recover struggling or lost customers and recoup valuable revenue. To gain a deep understanding of customer behavior and preferences, you need complete, integrated analytics that provide unified views and perspectives across modes and channels of customer interactions. 5

6 Figure 1 shows how a complete view helps businesses reap more value from their customer data. Conventional analytics provide a lot of, enough to answer the individual questions in the middle column through different types of analyses. Customer analytics, however, combine those analyses with contextual to create a deeper level of awareness. This understanding enables businesses to accomplish customer-centric goals like those in the right column. Customer Conventional analytics Journey Where did they come from? What did they buy? How many times did they visit? What devices did they use? Behavioral Where did they struggle? What caused them to leave? How many times did they try to accomplish their goals? Sentiment What do they care about? What are they saying about us? How do they feel about us? Predictive What will they do next? What will they want? What will engage them? Customer understanding Identify your most valuable customers Make it easier for them to do business with you Inspire loyalty and turn customers into advocates Improve customer satisfaction and customer experience Know when they are ready for new offerings Discover your customer s interests Know when to present them the right offer at the right time Reduce friction and customer struggles Figure 1. Understanding customers holistically requires combining digital, behavioral, sentiment and predictive analytics. The key is applying this insight in the context of the individual customer, based on their recent actions and unique relationship with your company. 6

7 Five critical needs for Optimizing the customer experience requires a combination of digital, behavioral, sentiment and predictive analytics to gain a complete view. Organizations across industries can use integrated analytics to meet five critical customer-centric business needs: Acquire the right customers Deliver a superior customer experience Optimize the customer journey Serve and delight customers across all interaction channels Reduce fraud and customer disputes Need #1: Acquire the right customers Scenario: A financial services company is looking for ways to improve customer acquisition metrics while increasing the return on its marketing spend. The marketing team relies heavily on digital analytics data but lacks behavioral insights into what customers need and want. It also has limited understanding of its customers opinions and preferences. Differing marketing approaches and inconsistent engagement across contact channels is causing higher customer churn. In the following pages, we will walk through examples that illustrate these five needs and show how applying the right analytics solutions can result in successful, highly favorable outcomes. 7

8 To improve channel efficiency and messaging and better anticipate customer needs, the company requires a deeper understanding of customer behavior and sentiments, and it must identify the right combination of channels to maximize return on investment. Solution: Through the seamless integration of digital and social analytics, the company can gain deeper insight into its customers at a more granular level, including traffic data, prevailing sentiments, online reviews, completed transactions and conversions. Digital analytics help determine which channels and ads drive desired visitor behavior and pinpoint the organization s most valuable customers. Using social analytics, analysts can identify evolving topics, social conversations and product affinities and correlations. With these integrated capabilities, the business can segment prospects and drill down to get exact details about visitor behavior that will help it improve customer targeting and increase the value of its campaigns. Results: Better insight allows the financial services firm to deliver more targeted, personalized offers, resulting in increased conversions and more first-time customer sales. Marketing capabilities help determine the right set of channels to place marketing dollars for higher returns. Tailored offers, combined with a more personalized approach, help build and develop long-term customer relationships that lead to a lifetime of highly valued customers. Click here to view a video on customer analytics. 8

9 Need #2: Deliver superior customer experience Scenario: Joe is the vice president of sales at a regional bank. Recent reports show that customer turnover is on the rise: the bank is getting a good number of new customers, but those gains are offset by the churn volume as other customers close accounts and leave for competitors. Joe needs to know more. He needs to identify which customers are most likely to leave; where in the process customers are most likely to leave; and how the sales, marketing and customer service staff can identify actions that will help reduce churn. Analyzing customer behavior trends and sentiment will provide important context for Joe s decisions. Solution: Using sophisticated analytical software, the marketing team is able to capture every customer interaction on its website right down to the page-by-page, browser-level experience. By capturing the qualitative details of each contact, including critical aspects such as surfacing errors and replaying interactions, the analytical solution provides the visibility, insight and answers the company needs to minimize churn, increase repeat purchases and maximize revenue in the moment. 9

10 The bank s sales team can also use this rich customer experience data set to take advantage of customer profitability through up-sell and cross-sell offers. Results: With the customer data provided by the analytical software, Joe can quantify the potential impact of customer struggle and prioritize his optimization efforts accordingly. In addition, the e-commerce team can target offers for different parts of the customer journey, while maintaining real-time transparency across all physical and digital channels to deliver the right offer to the right customer at the right time. The benefits arrive quickly; the world-class customer experience drives higher loyalty and retention rates for the bank. 91% of companies have limited or no understanding of why people leave their site without converting. 4 10

11 Need #3: Optimize the customer journey Scenario: In reviewing its booking rates, an online travel agency noticed an unusually low number of conversions for its rental car reservations. Visitors typically start the vacation packages booking process from the home page and progress through a series of actions, including searching for rental cars by destination city and pickup date. A review of recent web activity showed that many visitors were leaving the site without purchasing. However, without detailed customer journey across multiple sessions coupling with quantitative and behavior analytical capabilities, analysts could not see what was causing the struggle and abandonment, and thus, the low conversion rates. Solution: Using advanced customer journey analytics, the agency can view dashboards showing conversion funnels for all key processes and drill down to uncover factors that inhibit progression. They can quickly see booking rates for rental cars from the website s home page and from cross-selling after a purchased flight, and then compare the difference between the two processes. 11

12 Analysts can search for visitors who started the rental car booking process from the home page across multiple sessions but never completed the process. By segmenting and replaying user sessions, they get deeper insights into the customer experience and better understand why certain visitors abandoned their transactions. Results: Through sophisticated customer journey and customer experience analytics, analysts discovered some interesting details related to abandoned transactions. In many instances, visitors were receiving a No Matching Cars Found response from their search because they used the default time of pickup on the home page instead of changing it to match their plans. The default was midnight a time when many rental car agencies have no cars available. The reason conversions were high after a customer booked a flight was because the pickup time default changed from midnight to one hour after arrival. With this insight, the agency changed the default pickup time to 10:00 a.m. (instead of midnight) and saw a significant increase in the number of conversions from the home page. 12

13 Need #4: Serve and delight customers Scenario: A call center agent at a leading insurance company receives a call from a longtime customer, Sue, who is having a problem submitting a claim form online. The agent asks Sue what error message she received and where it appeared, but Sue cannot recall the details about the message and is no longer on the error page. Solution: With his customer experience management software, the agent uses behavioral analytics to select the appropriate session and quickly drills down for details. The agent locates the error page and with a single click, views the actual error. He also sees that Sue skipped the page to insert a photo for a claim. This level of knowledge helps the agent avoid using the policyholder as a discovery tool, effectively reducing customer churn and improving customer satisfaction. 13

14 With detailed from customer experience analytics, the agent can: Use that to make more personalized recommendations in the future Recover abandoned customers and improve the effectiveness of customer support Identify customers with similar issues and proactively reach out to resolve their issues Develop offers tailored to business objectives and targeted to customer profiles Results: The agent immediately identified Sue s claim submission issue and resolved it. The analytics also showed that Sue had been searching the website for insurance options for a boat. Without missing a beat, the agent asks Sue if she owns a boat and tells her about a current promotion for existing customers. Sue explains that she is about to buy a new boat and is currently researching insurance options. The agent connects Sue with a claims rep to add boat insurance to her plan. Within a single interaction, the agent resolved a potential problem, secured a product sale and created a satisfied customer. 14

15 Need #5: Reduce fraud and customer disputes Scenario: Frank calls into his automobile insurance company s contact center to question a recent claim. Because the insured vehicle was classified as a classic, his repair bill was much higher than he expected. Frank insisted that he had selected a policy for a classic car during his original purchase, so the higher costs should be covered. As the customer s call quickly escalates from a question into a formal dispute, the call center agent turns to the archived customer record system to investigate further. Solution: With an instantly replayable record of all critical online transactions, the agent can more readily resolve disputes and detect fraudulent activity either in real time or after the call. The agent speaking with Frank quickly locates and replays the original customer session in which Frank selected his coverage levels. Upon review, the agent found that Frank had originally selected the classic category at the time of the initial quote, but then removed the designation after seeing the premium quote. Results: The agent related his findings and with this documentation, Frank decided to withdraw his claim. In this case, the same tools that helped the company improve the customer experience and streamline ongoing audit and compliance efforts also enabled an agent to quickly resolve a dispute and retain the customer. 15

16 Gaining deeper insight As these scenarios demonstrate, meeting the five critical business challenges requires an integrated approach to analytics. Unlike siloed departmental solutions, comprehensive analytical capabilities are designed to provide a complete view of what your customers are doing across channels and across all site visits. This broad, integrated view gives you the intelligence you need to create personalized experiences that win more business and drive loyalty. You can: Target customers with highly relevant offers across all channels, including digital, mobile and social Understand your customers in the context of their individual relationships with your brand Engage with customers through the right channel, with the right message, at the right time Predict which customers are at risk of churning and why, and take actions to retain them Measure customer sentiment and spot emerging trends in social media and survey data Maximize customer lifetime value through personalized up-sell and cross-sell offers Gaining this complete customer view requires combining digital, customer experience, sentiment and predictive analytics. Digital analytics help you do much more than just optimize websites and online ads. They enable you to understand customer behavior across sessions and devices, so you gain a better understanding of your customers over time. Customer experience management solutions provide qualitative insight by capturing, analyzing and replaying individual user web and mobile interactions, helping you understand what your customers are doing and why. 16

17 IBM ExperienceOne Understand Your Customers with customer analytics IBM ExperienceOne provides unified views and analytics across all modes and channels of customer interactions, empowering you with actionable insight that helps you reduce costs, fight churn, grow revenue and delight your customers. IBM ExperienceOne gives you an integrated picture of who your customers are, what they are doing, why they struggle and what they are saying. Social media analytics help you uncover emerging trends that may have escaped your attention. It answers more than just What do people think about us? but rather, Are we making the right investments in products and services, market segments, campaigns, employees and partners? Are we reaching the intended audiences and are we listening to them and resolving their concerns? Predictive analytics enable you to apply current intelligence to forward-looking queries to make better-informed decisions and take action confidently. Customer satisfaction is the lifeblood of business, but few companies are taking full advantage experience. Gaining a better understanding of your customers can open up a world of opportunity for your business, offering a clearer view of what is and is not working well across customer channels. With deeper insights, you ll be able to: Empower marketers, merchandisers, sales and service leaders to coordinate interactions and create ongoing customer dialogs across channels Infuse that dialog with real-time and mobile capabilities and insights Identify struggle trends and sources of friction Measure performance and predict outcomes to prioritize resources for the customers and moments that matter most to your business 17

18 Customer analytics competency: A must-have The way people use digital channels to access products and services is constantly evolving. With the right analytics infrastructure, you can transform your understanding of your customers, and use that insight to drive positive results. Integrated analytics solutions provide the you need to not only optimize your customers experiences on your website and mobile properties, but also to increase wallet share, reduce churn, gain more repeat customers, recover struggling or lost customers, recoup valuable revenue and reduce operational costs. Building a customer analytics competency also unites employees through a common language. 18

19 Resources To learn more about how IBM Customer Analytics solutions help break down department barriers and align everyone around a shared view, check out these additional resources: IBM Tealeaf Customer Experience Management Digital Analytics Social Media Analytics Predictive Customer Intelligence 19

20 Copyright IBM Corporation 2015 Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY Produced in the United States of America March 2015 IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, and Tealeaf are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at Copyright and trademark at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided. 1 IBM Study Points to CMO, Marketer of the Future, as Customer Experiences Remain Top Priority. May 21, ibm.com/press/ us/en/pressrelease/41155.wss 2 Survey results from an Ipsos Public Affairs poll conducted for IBM from December 30, 2013, to January 13, 2014, in the United States. A national sample of 2,032 adults aged 18 and older was interviewed online. Weighting was employed to balance demographics and ensure that the sample s composition reflects that of the US adult population according to US census data, and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. The data was weighted to the American population data by region, gender, age and income. 3 Ibid. 4 Reducing Customer Struggle. Econsultancy Digital Marketing Excellence research report, in association with IBM Tealeaf. June Please Recycle ZZM12377-USEN-00