Drive More Valuable Customer Experience With Proactive Engagement Across the Life Cycle

Transcription

1 Drive More Valuable Customer Experience With Proactive Engagement Across the Life Cycle Sheryl Kingstone, Director, All Businesses Struggle With Addressing Complex Customer Journeys Businesses today are struggling with ways to create a personalized, transparent customer experience where all interaction channels work seamlessly together to seize every revenue opportunity while delivering consistent service anywhere, anytime. As competitive pressures mount, companies must meet the rising demands of their customers with fewer resources, limited budgets and older technology that doesn t really do it all in a do-it-all world. They also might not have the in-house expertise needed to understand the best approaches to become customer-centric and transition to a mobile world. Companies today tend to wait for problems to appear before addressing issues, which creates customer frustration. Implementing proactive customer communications is very difficult because it involves planning ahead and anticipating customer needs. To differentiate themselves, businesses need unique ways to acquire, service, maintain and grow relationships with consumers. For example, retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) organizations are struggling with unique ways to drive store traffic, increase promotion response rates and/or grow opt-in databases. Many businesses have not yet mobilized existing loyalty programs or even created new mobile loyalty programs so they can identify the best customers to increase repeat purchases and focus on customer satisfaction. TABLE OF CONTENTS June 2014 All Businesses Struggle With Addressing Complex Customer Journeys 1 New Consumer Behaviors, Experiences, Business Dynamics and Innovations Create New Opportunities for Engagement 2 Strategies for Proactive Customer Engagement Across the Life Cycle 4 Cloud, Preference Management and Analytics Are Essential 6 Partnering for Success 7 Conclusions and Recommendations 8 Financial service organizations must respond quicker to market conditions to build more loyal and profitable customer relationships, address delinquency rates and provide better customer service at a lower cost. These businesses need to ease the card activation process, improve response time for fraud and enhance communications on products and services. Telecommunications businesses must improve the on-boarding of new customer activation, convert more customers from free to paid subscriptions with timely service expiration reminders and reduce the complexity of customer care follow-up messages to deflect unnecessary calls that negatively impact the efficiency of a contact center. Utilities and energy companies also struggle with heightened expectations for customer service, increased consumer awareness of energy-efficiency programs and compliance with regulatory requirements. Critical business issues such as these make customer engagement a strategic priority. To achieve truly personalized cross-channel interactions, businesses must use a combination of the right tools to accommodate individual behaviors and preferences, integrate interactions across multiple channels and learn from the outcomes of prior communications to achieve enhanced business results. This custom publication has been sponsored by Genesys.

2 New Consumer Behaviors, Experiences, Business Dynamics and Innovations Create New Opportunities for Engagement Understanding consumer preferences is a critical issue that all businesses must address. While preference for mobile interaction has grown, that only adds to the complexity of meeting customer preferences across channels. It s important to look across the customer journey to enable customers to choose which channels they prefer for which types of communication at what time. It s not an easy task, especially considering these interaction channels are typically siloed, which inhibits the ability to create a personalized, consistent customer experience that promotes engagement. While many companies today have broadened their customer interactions across multiple channels, including , voice, text messaging and the Web, most companies don t take customer preference into consideration and treat each channel separately, creating multiple communications streams for each one. Companies should instead seek to communicate seamlessly across interaction channels while personalizing communications at the individual level. As Exhibit 1 shows, the need to support more sophisticated customer interactions is increasing the complexity of delivering superior customer experiences. During the past two years, preferences for traditional channels such as home telephone, and desktop Web have declined significantly compared to newer mobile channels such as text messaging, mobile self-service apps, mobile chat, mobile Web sites or even using the mobile phone to speak to a customer service agent directly. Exhibit 1: Mobile Channel Grows in Interaction Preference Source: Yankee Group s 2010 and 2012 US Consumer Survey, December Percent Change in Preferences for Customer Interaction, % Home telephone -25% -6% Online/Web chat -2% Social media Mobile phone - to speak with a customer service representative Browse Web site on the mobile phone Mobile phone - text to a company representative Mobile phone - self-service Company Web site 5% 8% 10% 10% 12% Page 2

3 Customers today are interacting with businesses on any device through any channel to find whatever they want, whenever they want it. They wake up in the morning and check and update Facebook from their phone. They get on a train, check Facebook again and read the news, but this time on a tablet. When they get to the office, they use a laptop to perform their work but still stay updated on their personal lives. Yankee Group sees four top forces driving further investment in improving customer engagement (see Exhibit 2): New kinds of consumers. With 5 billion connected customers by 2015, influence, power and behavior has shifted. Yankee Group s 2013 US Consumer Survey, March, finds 64 percent of consumers say they need to be connected to the Internet at all times, 60 percent say their phone is highly important to their social lives and 57 percent say they frequently use their mobile device for entertainment. We see individuals collective voices driving change and innovation. Customers are now in the driver s seat, with Web and social media tools such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook creating volumes of information. New kinds of experiences. Yesterday s world was about one-way customer interactions; today s world is about social conversations and engagement anywhere on any device to ensure a positive experience. Yankee Group estimates that 60 percent of interactions across the customer journey are interrelated. As a result, interactions must be relevant to customers in order to gain their trust and encourage them to opt in to ongoing conversations. Personalized cross-channel interactions throughout the customer life cycle from first contact through to customer care are key to a quality customer experience. New kinds of opportunities. Sixty-three percent of businesses are prioritizing mobile as a way to improve customer responsiveness. It s not just about a touch point; it s about meaningful contact that actually drives revenue. It s about creating a relevant customer dialogue to avoid communication fatigue, nurture loyalty and increase sales. This means businesses must not only present a single face to the customer, but must also have a complete picture of that customer. To gain that completeness, all departments must have a shared memory of previous customer interactions so they can develop communications strategies that build on and learn from prior experiences. New kinds of technologies. Businesses can deliver a completely different level of personalized service from first contact to cash to care by harnessing key enablers such as customer opt-in, mobile Web pages, service and payment reminders, customer satisfaction surveys, product recall notifications and a preference center that drives personalized, targeted customer interactions. They can also leverage mobile loyalty elements such as cardless loyalty programs that promote engagement around rewards balance reminders and even text-to-pay solutions. The key will be to use technology as a strategic advantage by harnessing customer behavior, preferences and history to engage users in a unique experience across the life cycle. Exhibit 2: Four Forces Combine To Transform Customer Experience Source: Yankee Group, % New Experiences want a more personalized, consistent customer experience across all mobile channels, including Web and voice New Technologies of businesses are interested in initiatives that provide proactive and personalized communications 5 billion 84% 63% New Consumers people will be directly touched by connected experiences in 2015 New Opportunities $ $$ of businesses are prioritizing mobile as a way to be more responsive to customers In today s world, where competitive differentiation is crucial and defined by quality of experience, personalized customer engagement strategies across multiple interaction channels are critical to long-term success. Page 3

4 Strategies for Proactive Customer Engagement Across the Life Cycle Strategies that take advantage of cross-channel customer engagement to deliver a better overall customer experience and establish long-term, profitable relationships with consumers are essential. It is also crucial to move beyond reactive customer response to more proactive customer treatment to not only strengthen brand loyalty and retention, but to also lower the cost of customer service. Proactive customer care across multiple communications channels is quickly gaining recognition as a fundamental pillar of a quality customer experience. Capturing preferences, learning from observed behaviors and delivering a better, more intelligent communications strategy can help businesses acquire, serve, maintain and grow their organizations (see Exhibit 3). Exhibit 3: Driving Customer Engagement Across the Life Cycle Source: Yankee Group, 2013 Location-based offers and coupons Loyalty reminders and cross-sell improvements Mobile offers and coupons Text contests and campaigns QR code campaigns GROW ACQUIRE NURTURE SERVE Mobile loyalty Payment reminders Proactive notifications Self-service payments Welcome messages Surveys Confirmation and reminders Acquire As long as the potential customer has opted in to receive communications from a company, mobile marketing can slice through the noise of other media channels to engage consumers in new ways. Newer mobile customer engagement strategies can revitalize existing marketing efforts to drive in-store traffic and increase response rates to promotions. For example, 91 percent of respondents to our U.S. consumer survey show an interest in mobile coupons, making them a great new customer acquisition strategy. If a technology and marketing strategy is implemented correctly, some businesses see very high redemption rates anywhere from 8 to 20 percent higher than traditional coupon redemption. Other customer engagement marketing strategies can include new, unique opportunities such as mobile scavenger hunts, text messaging polls and trivia, contests and promotions. For example, customers could be asked which communication methods and offers they prefer in exchange for prizes, and they can sign up for reminders on offers or promotions. The result will increase response and conversion rates, creating more momentum for future campaigns. Page 4

5 Serve Once customers have been acquired, businesses can engage and satisfy them by proactively communicating via preferred channels including mobile to strengthen relationships, increase loyalty and reduce unnecessary calls to the contact center. A positive first-time customer experience is a critical step toward building long-term value. By establishing contact early in the customer relationship life cycle, a business can start off on positive footing, immediately addressing anticipated questions, engaging the user and influencing behavior. Successfully on-boarding new customers with basic instructions and answers to frequently asked questions, validating customer contact information and soliciting future communications preferences are all examples of ways to provide proactive customer service. Businesses should also use cross-channel user surveys to capture the voice of the customer, quickly address issues and concerns and deepen customer loyalty. This creates realtime, interactive engagement that measures Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer satisfaction, enabling prompt follow-up. Businesses can use the information to quickly identify detractors and provide immediate resolution, creating a closed-loop process for ongoing engagement and future revenue opportunities. Nurture With today s consumer belonging to an average of more than 18 loyalty programs, businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate their systems. Transitioning traditional loyalty programs to truly leverage mobility is essential and not as difficult as it used to be. Companies that start now will catch the rising mobile customer wave at just the right time and reap the rewards. Cardless loyalty programs not only ease enrollment and redemption, but also gather the data necessary for targeting high-value customers. Mobile loyalty programs that reward users by tying rich customer profiles to actual transaction data provide the best foundation for success. Blanketing customers with text messaging campaigns is not a meaningful engagement strategy; it alienates customers and causes them to opt out of future marketing communications. Personalized, contextrelevant offers are more effective, and basing rewards on real-world transactions ensures they are calibrated appropriately and promotes stronger engagement. Self-service payment and personalized approaches to collections will also help maintain and retain customers. It s important to use a combination of interaction touch points to notify customers who are approaching or exceeding spending limits and remind them of upcoming payment due dates. Once a payment reminder is received, the customer can respond within the same channel (or another channel) to initiate a payment. Payments can be made in real time to avoid unnecessary late fees and possible service interruptions. Cross-channel dialogues using customers preferred channels of engagement have been proven to not only increase payments but also improve customer satisfaction. Customers can choose to opt in to personalized reminders with the account number, due date and amount due to avoid future collection costs and prevent missed payments from becoming bad debts. Grow Growing existing customers wallet share is an essential business strategy. Personalized, timely offers can increase purchase frequency, grow basket size and ARPU and differentiate a company from its competitors. The main added benefit during this part of the customer engagement strategy is insight. During acquisition, businesses usually rely on aggregated segments due to the anonymous nature of the relationship. However, over time, businesses can build rich user profiles to drive unparalleled depth and breadth of customer segmentation that can be used for improved engagement strategies based on the individual preferences and patterns of each customer. Traditional marketing lacks two key components that mobile engagement can provide: location awareness and integration with loyalty programs. Loyalty programs are not just for maintaining the relationship; they re also for growing revenue. Some companies have achieved three times higher redemption rates and incremental revenue gains just by improving cross-channel communications strategies. Tying marketing campaigns to mobile loyalty programs helps businesses understand their customers because as those consumers tailor location-based promotions and loyalty offers on their mobile phones, they are also tailoring the company s profile of them. Businesses can learn more about what time customers are visiting stores, how often they visit and when they are redeeming their loyalty points. To achieve personalized cross-channel interactions, businesses must accommodate individual behaviors and preferences, integrate interactions across multiple channels and learn from the outcomes of prior communications. Truly effective personalization can build customer loyalty and achieve a better return on customer interactions. Page 5

6 Cloud, Preference Management and Analytics Are Essential Technology advancements can play a major role in the success of any initiative. As mobile communications continue to improve, 84 percent of businesses are interested in initiatives that provide proactive and personalized communications. Historically, this has been difficult to accomplish. Now, however, advancements in cloud, preference management and analytics can help because: Cloud-based solutions are less expensive, faster to deploy and easier to use. By plugging into the cloud, businesses may be able to tap into less expensive and more powerful resources that allow them to focus on strategic innovation rather than infrastructure and application maintenance. By reducing application complexity and removing cumbersome implementation procedures, applications in the cloud are essentially available immediately. New solutions are usually written from the ground up and are also constantly upgraded with the latest bells and whistles to ensure customer retention. Dynamic preference management platforms include both stated and observed preferences. Businesses can design more intelligent, relevant and targeted proactive customer communications strategies that optimize business results by centralizing the ongoing tracking and management of customers preferences, observed behavior and profile data. Consumers are often willing to provide organizations with their communications preferences, but they have to be asked. Observing customer behavior can also provide great insight into the best communication strategy. By combining stated and implied preferences, businesses gain valuable insight that will lead to deeper customer engagement and improved response rates. Insight is essential to ensure communication intelligence and measure results. Relevant analytics close the loop, ensuring a more accurate measurement of a customer engagement strategy. Analytics also ensure future initiatives are relevant and personalized (see Exhibit 4 on the next page). Analytics platforms allow businesses to mine the explosion of information brought on by newer mobile channels. Coaxing relevant insights from the mountain of data will pave the way for intelligent communications. Over-communicating is just as bad as undercommunicating. Businesses should use a combination of insight and technology to interact with every customer on a personal level. Monitoring and storing customer interaction outcomes enhances communications intelligence over time. This can only be done by eliminating manual processes and using intelligent automation. Identifying patterns in individual behaviors and preferences in real time without manual intervention is a critical step. Page 6

7 Exhibit 4: Real-Time, Context-Driven Communications Breed Success Source: Yankee Group, 2013 Individual Behaviors and Preferences Business Results Preferred channel Account details Customer loyalty Preferred language Time of day Call deflection Marketing at the Right Time with the Right Message Can Improve Results by 40% Lower TCO Best practices Text Voice Two-way interactions Realtime Outcome history Pattern identification Decisioning engine Integrated Across Channels, Messages and Applications Self-Improving Based on Outcomes Partnering for Success Many specialists are popping up to help companies deal with this complexity. These outside resources can play a consultative role in not just IT projects, but also communications strategy. One interesting player to evaluate is Genesys. It offers customer experience management solutions across the life cycle so businesses can accommodate individual behaviors and preferences, integrate interactions across multiple channels and learn from the outcomes of prior communications to achieve business results. Its solutions are targeted specifically for mobile marketing, proactive customer care and collections and payments. Genesys has provided solutions for customers across various industries. Examples include: A U.S. Tier 1 mobile carrier implemented a closed-loop, cross-channel NPS survey program to improve satisfaction, identify detractors and mitigate churn. The survey began with an interactive five-question text program. Live agent calls followed up with all detractors using the integrated cloud dialer, resulting in a 21 percent survey response rate and successfully reaching 55 percent of detractors to proactively address issues, answer questions and resolve problems. One of the world s largest financial services institutions sought to increase payments by adding a channel for customers to make self-service payments. The U.S.-based company used unique cross-channel customer engagement capabilities to gain opt-in responses via text and seamlessly transfer to a secure automatic voice message to capture confidential payment information. Once enrolled, customers make payments by texting pay and passing a verification event. If initial results are positive, the company would like to increase payments via a self-serve channel, which are currently at 5 percent, to 40 percent by Page 7

8 A retail store specializing in apparel, accessories and footwear sought increased customer awareness, increased sales and deeper customer relationships across its 800+ stores in 40 U.S. states by leveraging the mobile device to increase customer engagement. The company incorporated text messaging and mobile Web sites into promotional schedules with added incentives for participants. Genesys managed a mobile initiative for a national sweepstakes. Customers were also asked to indicate their preferred communication methods and offers by texting short codes to win prizes. The company achieved high customer participation, with about 2,000 entries per day during a five-week period. Thirty-nine percent of sweepstakes participants joined via mobile alert, with only 0.1 percent of those subscribers opting out at the sweepstakes conclusion. Another U.S. retailer providing multi-channel entertainment products observed that half of its rewards were unredeemed at their expiration dates. The company used the Genesys Proactive Loyalty Solution to deliver redemption reminder calls to all holders of unredeemed rewards 30 days prior to the offers expiration. As a result, the retailer saw a 29 percent increase in number of redemptions and generated $900,000 in incremental revenue. By implementing a cross-channel solution that appeals to users individual concerns and preferences, these companies improved customer experience, increased revenues and reduced cost of doing business. Conclusions and Recommendations The customer experience consists of multiple moments of truth across all channels. Thus, any one channel that degrades the customer experience will negatively impact all others. Yankee Group believes proactive customer engagement is quickly gaining a position as a required ingredient of good customer experience. Cross-channel interaction will be critical for business differentiation as consumers rapidly begin to accept and prefer different modes of communication. We recommend companies: Build a cohesive communications strategy across the entire customer journey, from first contact to care. Timing is everything. Use proactive communications not only across the customer life cycle, but across all departments as well. The goal is to send the right message to the right customer at the right time and through the right channel to increase customer response rate, which can improve success by 40 percent. But it s not just about the message; it is also about the interactivity of the dialogue across the customer life cycle. Integrate channels for better outcomes. Intelligent cross-channel strategies enable seamless communications through any channel. Unlike a simple parallel or progressive multi-channel (voice, , text messaging) strategy where messages are blindly sent to the same contact, cross-channel blends multiple methods of communication, building on customers unique preferences and past behavior. Look toward mobile for a successful customer engagement. Capturing and storing the outcomes of each individual interaction improves customer dialogue across all channels. The improved profile may include data such as time of payments, time of day calls are answered, preferred devices, preferred channels, language preferences, etc. The bottom line is that implementing such strategies reduces contact center costs through call deflection and agent efficiency, improves interaction success rates and eliminates overlap in communications. Page 8

9 Don t just survey, close the loop with immediate action. Take advantage of the opportunity presented in a survey by following up with customers immediately. Ensure voice-of-the-customer programs don t gather feedback that is not actionable. Companies must listen and then close the loop with an immediate response, minding the gap between feedback and resolution to ensure customer satisfaction, whether the feedback is positive or negative. Find the right partner. To discover which customer experience partner is right for the company, it must begin with a strong internal understanding of the business goals and objectives of a cross-channel customer experience not just within the executive team and marketing department, but also with IT, sales and customer experience. Once this is set, the answer to the question Which partner is the best fit for us? will become clear. It s also very important to find outside resources that understand your business and can play a consultative role in not just IT projects, but also communications strategies. About the Author Sheryl Kingstone Director Sheryl is the director of Yankee Group s Enterprise Research group, with expertise in customer-centric strategies. Kingstone s research helps businesses improve sales effectiveness, customer loyalty and acquisition. Specifically, she helps enterprise clients make decisions regarding the use of technology, business processes and information to boost sales and optimize top-line business performance. She also assists vendors with custom research projects, messaging and positioning, as well as product road map evaluations. Kingstone researches and writes on the top trends in marketing and sales effectiveness and customer-centric processes, and evaluates all CRM application and delivery strategies. HEADQUARTERS Corporate One Liberty Square 6th Floor Boston, Massachusetts phone fax European 30 Artillery Lane London E17LS United Kingdom phone fax Copyright Yankee 451 Group, LLC. Yankee Group published this content for the sole use of Yankee Group subscribers. It may not be duplicated, reproduced or retransmitted in whole or in part without the express permission of Yankee Group, One Liberty Square, 6 th Floor, Boston, MA All rights reserved. All opinions and estimates herein constitute our judgment as of this date and are subject to change without notice.