One View Of Customer Data & Marketing Data

Transcription

1 One View Of Customer Data & Marketing Data Ian Kenealy, Head of Customer Data & Analytics, RSA spoke to the CX Network and shared his thoughts on all things customer, data and analytics! Can you briefly tell me what your role as Head of Customer Data and Analytics entails and how your job impacts on RSA s wider customer experience management and marketing strategy? My role has got a number of facets to it, the main part initially is to create the single dataset that enables us to deliver what the business needs from one set of metrics that are accurate and consistent, so that s both from a customer single view which means we can map all of our customer interactions into one place so we know what they re all doing across the different products and channels. But also to put all of our sales and marketing data together so that we have one view on what s going on with our performance. And by having that one set of data that we update centrally, manage with one set of rules and logic enables our analysts to then go away and focus entirely on exploiting that data rather than having to spend any of their valuable time cleaning and merging data which obviously gives you challenges in terms of potentially getting two answers from the same piece of questioning. So we spend a lot of time getting our data in one place so that we can all access it and then we focus our analytical resource on exploiting that data. That then enables us to give lots of great joined up views around the business, across the entire estate really so rather than just standard customer profiles we can start to understand how people are using multiple channels, so the web and the phone channels so that helps our operational team to look at how many people they re speaking to. They may have just been to our website which is something that they wouldn t know from their own data. So we obviously are trying to focus on the customer rather than produce data around products that maybe other parts of the business already produce. But by joining it all together we are able to really inform our web teams and our operational teams who interface with our customers on what s going on, who they are and what the opportunities and challenges are. I think the marketing strategy then becomes a lot easier because we ve got the data in one place we really do understand what we re getting back from the money we spend and that helps us optimise our marketing budget around the best place to get a return. And because we can look across products and across channels we can move money around, move activity around which if we were looking at it maybe in a more silo fashion wouldn t happen....it s really about getting one view of both our customer data and our marketing data to enable us to make joined up decisions across the entire estate If I was to describe it in one sentence, it s really about getting one view of both our customer data and our marketing data to enable us to make joined up decisions across the entire estate.

2 Sounds like you ve got a wide range of responsibilities that go really in-depth. What are the biggest challenges that you face? The big challenge is there s a lot of data out there, sometimes it s really hard to access particularly in the digital space. It s also very difficult in a lot of cases to identify the customer within that data because a lot of digital data is anonymous so a lot of people are moving around various websites, price comparison sites particularly in the insurance industry and you can t always identify the customer. So you are not able to draw on that data. You ve then got regulatory challenges around privacy and whether you re allowed to access that data. What you ve now got is there s so much data it s being able to process it quickly enough to understand which data is valuable. Every day we come across more data that might be valuable but you can t always access it because of technology challenges and also working out whether it is valuable or not is quite tough. So the big challenge is the breadth of data that s out there and trying to work out what s important, what isn t important so you don t spend too much time finding and analysing data that actually doesn t really add a lot of value. What steps do you take to find out if it is important or not important to what you re doing? We try and start with the business challenge at all times, rather than start with the data or the analytics. We look at various interactions or experiences that happen in the business, be it the quote to buy purchase or the renewal process. And by understanding, working with our colleagues across the network, where they think the gaps are or what we don t know, we then try and source data to fill those gaps rather than maybe go away and look at date that might be interesting. So what we do is say well if we ve got a number of people unable to renew in our online channel, we try and find out why and what data could support the understanding and to close those gaps. So we definitely try and focus on where we think the challenges are and where we think the opportunities are and try and help that rather than maybe start with the data; we try and start with a business problem. I know that sounds easy but if you start with the data you can end up spending a lot of time looking at things that aren t very valuable....the big challenge is the breadth of data that s out there and trying to work out what s important, what isn t important so you don t spend too much time finding and analysing data that actually doesn t really add a lot of value

3 You ve worked across various industries including energy and telecoms how have you found that the approach to customer experience and marketing differs within financial services where you are now? Obviously there s a lot more regulation but there s also in some ways a lot less interactions with customers. An insurance company won t have hundreds of transactions a year it will have maybe two transactions a year, some people it s as high as three. But you ve not got daily interactions like you might have with a telco where you ve got hundreds of transactions every day or a retailer where you might have hundreds of transactions in a year. So you ve got to try and pull together quite an indepth view of what s going on with the customer on quite a small amount of data so that s a challenge. And in financial services, it differs, but some products are even less than that, such as a mortgage, for example, where you re going to have even less interactions with the customer. So that s a big challenge and therefore that makes it harder to test and learn because you don t have as many opportunities, whereas a retailer or a telco can try something every day because they know they get lots of opportunities to try it. You don t get as many opportunities so you have to think quite differently about how you can make the interactions that happen as valuable as possible because it will be a long time before you get another one. You don t get as many opportunities so you have to think quite differently about how you can make the interactions that happen as valuable as possible because it will be a long time before you get another one Are there any innovative ways in which RSA is utilising data analytics to enhance the customer experience across the channels where you interact with your customers? Innovation can mean different things to different people. What we re trying to do here which is not necessarily happening everywhere, is we try and join up all the data and think a bit differently about the sources of the data. So rather than just work in silos or think about the renewal process as just being the transactional data around it, we try and look at the whole end-to-end and what other things might be happening. We re certainly looking at what external data goes on, where the customer might be in their life stage, from what you don t know from your own data to try and help us inform it. So rather than let your own data tell you that this customer is an X value customer with Y tenure and that s all you know, you look at it more holistically by looking at external data saying - have they got a family, have they got children, where they might be in terms of their life stage that might change the way they re thinking about this transaction rather etc, than your own data which doesn t really tell you any of that. We re trying to bring in the outside a lot more into what might be going on to try and help think about whether all customers are really thinking the same when they do these transactions? No they probably aren t and that helps us a bit because then we start to tailor it a little bit more based around what the customer might want based on where we think they are with their external view of the world, rather than just what we know around our own data which would typically just be a value based, kind of interaction.

4 Yes and it goes back to what you were talking about earlier, about the customer profiles and making them as in-depth and useful as possible. Yes, a family with two children are going to have a very different thought process than maybe a single guy renewing his car insurance. But on face value they might both have a renewal date of tomorrow and a premium of 300 and the process will be identical for both but they may need something different in the way you deal with them that you can t see in your own data. So we try and bring some of that out to try and explain why there d be differences in the outcomes that then might help us change the way we manage those experiences moving forward. Regarding privacy, there s a fine line between gathering data to optimise the customer journey and invading privacy; how do you approach this at RSA? Oviously we re very regulated and we ve got a very strong clients angle so there are a number of people who help us make sure we are very much within the law and within what we believe to be correct, we re very comfortable from that respect. What we also try and do is using data for the right purpose so you can use a lot of in-depth data to understand a customer that might change the overall approach to your next interaction with them. But that doesn t necessarily mean you then are very overt in the conversation that might make the customer nervous. So knowing a lot about a customer that might shape the type of conversation you have or the channel in which you have the conversation is very different than talking to your customer and saying we notice that you did this yesterday and that today. It s about being overt and using the direct data versus using the insights from large groups of very similar customers to try and shape the overall interaction. It doesn t really matter that this customer hasn t done a behaviour that the cohort that they belong to has done. It s more about the most common approach for this customer group to behave like this so let s use the data to try and mirror that in the conversation which is very different than just being very overt and saying we know you did this. The customer says - well how do you know I did this? - because that then puts you into a place of where you invite the customer to opt out or not give you consent to use their data. So we try and just use it much more to shape the overall interaction, to make it a bit more aligned to what the customer wants rather than trying to be very exacting and maybe potentially frightening the customer. That s quite important because not all data needs to be used in an overt fashion for you to get value out of it; where some data clearly is very personal to the customer that is only available in that transaction.

5 What do you find is the most effective way to extract real value from customer data? You mentioned starting with the business challenge to ensure alignment - is there anything else you do to ensure the most value? The main way we get the value is by joining it all up because you produce lots of bits of insight that really answer a specific question very detailed and often this really helps. But what we always try and do is to take a step back and say how does this complement what we already know about this type of customer? Because insight can look conflicting if you re not careful because the way that someone may behave during buying isn t necessarily the way they ll behave during a renewal or when they buy their second product they re not necessarily buying it the same way they bought their first product. What we re trying to do, almost every time we produce some insight is to try and join it to the story of how does this add or detract from what we already know and is this a trend? It s the way you have a corporate memory of what you know about all the different things and how you join it together is the value add, because if you try and answer the whole question in one piece analysis it tends to not. If you focus the analysis on the specific question you ve got now and then you then take the findings of that and say how does that add to what we already know about other questions and you start to see the commonalities and the differences. It gives us the opportunities to go and do further analysis that you wouldn t have found if you just answered that question on its own. We do a lot of work to try to piece together all the various bits of analysis and turn it into a wider story which works well for us but obviously gives you challenges in the fact that you can t always connect them so you have to have some hypotheses and leaps of faith that you can t always answer. But by looking at them individually you get a very different answer than if you look at them collectively. The marketing industry is constantly evolving, what do you think will be the major trends that will impact the industry in 2016? The trend that s starting to emerge and will continue is, in the past the number of channels where you could really personalise with the customer and really go and find the people you want were quite traditional direct marketing channels; direct mail, , SMS, telephone. And now the opportunities to really personalise and manage a customer s experience are coming from almost everywhere, social media, TV, the way you buy your digital marketing you can start to move to a one-to-one marketing in all these channels. And that s becoming easier to do because of technology and therefore makes it harder for businesses to manage a consistent experience because you can t just control the channels that you own and say as long as I get them to look at them same as when they talk to me these customers who are experiencing you via social media, via digital channels anonymously and if you re not consistent then the customer starts to think you don t know enough about them and you re not really valuing them. So the big trend, which is a big challenge for everybody is to try and work out how you can manage that customer irrespective of where they re interacting with your brand or your business and that s becoming more available as these channels become more intelligent, but also there s a bigger challenge as then you have to be on your game everywhere....the opportunities to really personalise and manage a customer s experience are coming from almost everywhere, social media, TV, the way you buy your digital marketing you can start to move to a one-to-one marketing in all these channels...

6 Are there any steps you are taking to ensure you can provide a consistent experience across all channels? What it is about is understanding if it s a significant amount of effort and investment to get a customer to have a consistent experience in a digital channel and then your analysis shows that it doesn t really add any value and it s not important to the customer. What we re trying to do is make sure the experiences that add most value, that customers value the most are the ones that we get right first. Therefore if you get those to be as good as they can possibly be, if you then improve the less important or the less volume-based interactions then it all adds to the value of the customer, rather than being not very good at managing an experience that the customer values because you don t think it s important and becoming excellent at managing interaction that they don t really care about that much. It s trying to align the effort and the intelligence to the interactions that really drive the most value....look beyond the data within the interaction and look beyond the data in the channel that the customer is. Try and piece the whole lot together to try and get to the bottom of why certain outcomes are happening. What s your ultimate piece of advice for fellow customer experience and marketing leaders to help them deliver a great customer experience? What I would say is look beyond the data within the interaction and look beyond the data in the channel that the customer is. Try and piece the whole lot together to try and get to the bottom of why certain outcomes are happening. For us, it s understanding a telephony interaction by what data you ve got and what you know about the telephony interaction, doesn t really answer the question. So it s then looking outside of that, looking at the date you ve got about that customer in the period before, during and after that interaction. That will provide one or two snippets of information that might enable you to make a small change that makes a big difference. But you won t see it if you look at it within the interaction; so what s the customer done in the preceding weeks that might help you understand a bit of the motivation for what they re looking for that might mean you can do it slightly better. So my advice is to try and think as broad as possible and try to pull together as much of the data you have got about that customer that might make that one interaction just slightly better. Because what you ve got to remember is the customer knows everything about what they ve done with your business when they make that interaction. If you don t know everything about that you put yourself at a disadvantage as the customer is now in control. My advice would be to try and get as much of the broader insight around what that customer has done and is doing to explain and enhance that experience rather than just the traditional silo event of what that customer doing during this interaction, easier said than done.

7 Interested in the themes addressed in this interview? Join the Customer Insight & Analytics Exchange to discuss this topic in greater detail with true industry experts, to join Social Media Debate: Real Time Marketing: Collecting & Interpreting, Measuring & Not Counting The use of data is becoming more sophisticated as companies use it to gather further insight into the behaviours of their customers. Finally social media has a seat at most boardroom tables as it offers the real-time evaluation benefits to evolve a campaign and so effectively change the way many campaigns are measured today. But how can social media impact on revenues, business value and on ROI? The panel will show some real case benefits of measuring social media campaign to drive a more agile customer insight. Jenny Burns, Group Communication, Brand & Social Media Director, RSA Carlos Soares, Vice President Analytics & Insights, Liberty Global Vince Darley, Chief Scientist, King This Interview was conducted and published by the CX Network Visit to subscribe and to gain exclsuive access to content including e-newsletter, podcasts, webinars, event discounts & online learning opportunities