กรุงเทพฯ--27 มี.ค.--Mind PR
by Kadir Dindar, Head of Customer Intelligence Strategy, SAS EMEA Center of Excellence
The spread of new communication channels exerts a huge influence on consumer behavior. Today, consumers are less tolerant of negative customer experiences. They react faster, more clearly, and often with greater resistanceafter experiencing problems.They swap information directly with one another, and share their opinions openly. Additionally, consumers no longer share experiences with just their neighbors, friends and regulars at the local bar. On the contrary, their comments can find many interested readers in Web 2.0 channels.
At this point, marketing has ceased to be the predominant influence in communication with the customer. This may seem like a threat to some specialists in branding or PR. Yet, the changing situation generates considerable opportunities for companies — if they can adapt. Consumer-oriented companies in particular have to master one key task: the shift from conventional customer relationship management (CRM) to holistic customer experience management (CEM). This transition completely alters the way that companies communicatewith their customers. Instead of focusing solely on the sales and marketingperspective, CEM focuses directly on the complete customer experience. For instance, what consumers think about a company is at least as important aswhat the company knows about them.To master these challenges and seizethe opportunities of varied customer touch points, more direct and spontaneous interactions with consumers, a wider diversity of products and increasingly fragmented customer groups, marketers should turn their attention tofive key areas.
1. Markets are conversations.
Start listening The idea that markets are conversations comes from the Cluetrain Manifesto, published in 1999. Today it is one ofthe central theoretical explanations for the social media phenomenon. It states that to act appropriately in a market, companies must first of all listen to the conversations taking place there and understand the content in a differentiated manner. At present, however, very few enterprises are in a position to do so, either in terms of methodology or in relation to data volumes and resources. A study published by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services in December 2010 reports that the majority of companies have not yet developed an orderly marketing discipline for social media. The study found that 75 percent of the 2,100 firms surveyed do not know what their most valuable customers say about them on the Internet. And hardly any firms have systematically evaluated customer opinions on the social Web. This is where SAS Social Media Analytics comes in. This pioneering solution collects and archives social media content, checks the relevance to a company or its brands, and supplies the foundation for decision making to specialist departments and managers. Content from popular networks such as Facebook and Twitter is recorded automatically and refined with the help of text analytics procedures.
The same method is applied to communities and discussion groups where consumers discuss
their experiences in specific areas. The solution moves beyond just counting key terms or blog entries to reduce the risk of incorrect assumptions with serious consequences. Only content that can be put into an unequivocalthematic order, and whose tone can be interpreted, will create thenecessary knowledge base for entering into an appropriate and credible interaction withthe customer in social media channels.
2. Measure and reinforce willingnessto make recommendations
Today you’re being praised to theskies, and tomorrow you’re totally out of favor. With changing consumer behavior,the question arises: How do you measure customer activities in today’sWeb 2.0 environment? Also, why doesthe digital evolution necessitate an addition to the existing CRM indicators, moving in the direction of CEM? If we accept the “markets are conversations” thesis, companies should be doing things like striving for positive comments and avoiding negative ones. However, suitable indicators must be applied to continually examine whether these goals are being achieved. Consumers’ experiences with brands or products often cause them to issue personal recommendations or warnings among the people that they
know. Their willingness to make recommendations is seen as a suitable key indicator of customer orientation: the greater the willingness of consumers to praise a company, its products and brands to their friends and followers, the higher its net promoter score (NPS). Fred Reichheld created NPS based on consumer willingness to recommend a brand. Companies with a high NPS, such as Apple, are also successful in business. Today, improving or stabilizing NPS should be a core objective of all customer- related activities. To this end, SAS Customer Intelligence enables not only the efficient, methodically correct assessment of NPS at all customer touch points, but also the use of both aggregated and individual customer survey results. And there’s more: A root cause analysis gives companies an exact picture of what is influencing their NPS — and what they can do specifically to raise it.
3. Become an analytical company
To quote Thomas H. Davenport, Professor at Babson College: “Successful companies are analytical companies.” Indeed, successful customer experience management requires an analytical corporate culture and an infrastructure to ensure optimum customer touch points, provide truly needs-driven advice, and to organize complaint management to make it more proactive. Now, what factors cultivate analytic corporate decisions and processes? In their 2010 book Analytics at Work, Davenport and Jeanne Harris identify factors in five focal areas: data, enterprise, leadership, targets and analysts. Whether a marketing department is just undertaking its first analytical steps, or is already one of the pioneers in its field, the authors’ maturity model describes specific steps in each area for improving one’s own analytical competencies. These suggestions can help tailor customer dialogues to be both relevant and consistent across channels. Another analytic opportunity arises from the fact that customer-related decisions are no longer restricted primarily to the marketing department. With customer interests and responsibilities touching a wide range of corporate units, it is of the greatest importance that event-based analytical insights should be available at all relevant customer touch points. This demand is explicitly addressed by the concept of the customer state vector that has been patented by SAS. The state vector holds all the data needed for successful customer management in one central data mart serving multiple divisions and processes. Theoretically, this aim — formulated by Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS — has been tried before, but in view of the digital evolution, it can and must be realized without delay.
4. Fact-driven marketing in a data-driven world
When are customer conversations successful in business terms? Consider the concept of performance marketing. It aims to measure the return on investment for online marketing expenditure and to improve it in a step-by-step fashion. Facts and test results count more than intuition, and individual activities are steered on the basis of items such as clickthrough rates for various types of online advertising or conversion rates for search engine marketing campaigns. Currently, the application of performance marketing has remained confined to typical online channels. However, longer-term effects of customer lifetime value and interactions with other channels will require a more far-reaching and holistic view. Consistent marketing performance management enables fact-based control in marketing by combining online and offline channels, short-term and long-term effects, and above-the-line and below-the-line measures. Never before has marketing had so many varied sources of information at its disposal for rapidly assessing the impact of activities using conclusive indicators to determine the best possible influence on results. This increased transparency, nevertheless, has two kinds of implications for marketing. On the one hand, it reduces the leeway for interpreting the marketing success of prior investments. On the other, negotiating future budget allocations benefits from reliable and sound indicators and performance forecasts. Only complete and consistent marketing performance management delivers the exhaustive, fact-based evidence of what marketing programs contribute to corporate goals.
5. Direct is interactive, nteractive is direct
Naturally, direct marketing remains at the heart of this fundamental transformation process. The shift from one-way communications toward a dialogue-oriented interaction with the customer will continue to be influenced by the digital landscape. This thesis is put forward by Stan Rapp in his book Reinventing Interactive and Direct Marketing. No matter when, where or how communication with target groups takes place, companies need a central customer contact policy taking all the channels into account and thus guaranteeing consistent messages for all customers. This includes counteracting a tendency observed in many companies where communication through digital channels runs parallel to and separate from other forms of communication.
Relevant, consistent and credible dialogues
Customers do not think in channels, but usually act intuitively. Modern marketing
decision makers must act with foresight and flexibility to always generate a positive customer experience, and above all an authentic dialogue. Customers are clearly ready for it.
Kadir Dindar is the Head of Strategy for Customer Intelligence at the EMEA Center of Excellence at SAS.
In this capacity he advises international companies on key issues for value-oriented customer management. Previously, Dindar spent many years as Head of the Customer Intelligence Competence Center at SAS Germany, successfully implementing large-scale projects, both national and international.