Demystifying Digital – Why Customer 360 is the Foundational Digital Capability – ..(1/3)

The first post in this three part series on Digital Foundations introduces the concept of Customer 360 or Single View of Customer (SVC). We will discuss the need for & the definition of the SVC as part of the first step in any Digital Transformation endeavor. We will also discuss specific benefits from both a business & operational state that are enabled by SVC. The second post in the series introduces the concept of a Customer Journey. The third & final post will focus on a technical design & architecture needed to achieve both these capabilities.

 

In an era of exploding organizational touch points, how many companies can truly claim that they know & understand their customers, their needs & evolving preferences deeply and from a realtime perspective?  

How many companies can claim to keep up as a customers product & service usage matures and keep them engaged by cross selling new offerings. How many can accurately predict future revenue from a customer based on their current understanding of their profile?

The answer is not at all encouraging.

Across industries like Banking, Insurance, Telecom & Manufacturing, the ability to get a unified view of the customer & their journey is at the heart of the the enterprise ability to promote relevant offerings & detect customer dissatisfaction. 

• Currently most industry players are woeful at putting together this comprehensive Single View of their Customers (SVC). Due to operational silos, each department possess a siloed & limited view of the customer across multiple channels. These views are typically inconsistent, lack synchronization with other departments & miss a high amount of potential cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

• The Customer Journey problem has been an age old issue which has gotten exponentially more complicated over the last five years as the staggering rise of mobile technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) have vastly increased the number of enterprise touch points that customers are exposed to in terms of being able to discover & purchase new products/services. In an OmniChannel world, an increasing number of transactions are being conducted online. In verticals like Retail and Banking, the number of online transactions approaches an average of 40%. Adding to the problem, more and more consumers are posting product reviews and feedback online. Companies thus need to react in realtime to piece together the source of consumer dissatisfaction.

Another large component of customer outreach are Marketing analytics & the ability to run effective campaigns to recruit customers.

The most common questions that a lot of enterprises fail to answer accurately are –

1. Is the Customer happy with their overall relationship experience?
2. What mode of contact do they prefer? And at what time? Can Customers be better targeted at these channels at those preferred times?
3. What is the overall Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) or how much profit we are able to generate from this customer over their total lifetime?
4. By understanding CLV across populations, can we leverage that to increase spend on marketing & sales for products that are resulting in higher customer value?
5. How do we increase cross sell and up-sell of products & services?
6. Does this customer fall into a certain natural segment and if so, how can we acquire most customers like them?
7. Can different channels (Online, Mobile, IVR & POS) be synchronized ? Can Customers begin a transaction in one channel and complete it in any of the others without having to resubmit their data?

The first element in Digital is the Customer Centricity & it must naturally follow that a 360 degree view is a huge aspect of that.

                                       Illustration – Customer 360 view & its benefits

So what information is specifically contained in a Customer 360 –

The 360 degree view is a snapshot of the below types of data –

• Customer’s Demographic information – Name, Address, Age etc
• Length of the Customer-Enterprise relationship
• Products and Services purchased overall
• Preferred Channel & time of Contact
• Marketing Campaigns the customer has responded to
• Major Milestones in the Customers relationship
• Ongoing activity – Open Orders, Deposits, Shipments, Customer Cases etc
• Ongoing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) Metrics and the Category of customer (Gold, Silver, Bronze etc)
• Any Risk factors – Likelihood of Churn, Customer Mood Alert, Ongoing issues etc
• Next Best Action for Customer

How Big Data technology can help..

Leveraging the ingestion and predictive capabilities of a Big Data based platform, banks can provide a user experience that rivals Facebook, Twitter or Google and provide a full picture of customer across all touch points.

Big Data enhances the Customer 360 capability in the following ways  –  

1. Obtaining a realtime Single View of the Customer (typically a customer across multiple channels, product silos & geographies) across years of account history 
2. Customer Segmentation by helping businesses understand customer segments down to the individual level as well as at a segment level
3. Performing Customer sentiment analysis by combining internal organizational data, clickstream data, sentiment analysis with structured sales history to provide a clear view into consumer behavior.
4. Product Recommendation engines which provide compelling personal product recommendations by mining realtime consumer sentiment, product affinity information with historical data.
5. Market Basket Analysis, observing consumer purchase history and enriching this data with social media, web activity, and community sentiment regarding past purchase and future buying trends.

Customer 360 can help improve the following operational metrics of a Retailer or a Bank or a Telecom immensely.

1. Cost to Income ratio; Customers Acquired per FTE; Sales and service FTE’s (as percentage of total FTE’s), New Accounts Per Sales FTE etc
2.  Sales conversion rates across channels, Decreased customer attrition rates etc.
3. Improved Net promotor scores (NPS), referral based sales etc

Customer 360 is thus basic digital capability every organization needs to offer their customers, partners & internal stakeholders. This implies a re-architecture of both data management and business processes automation.

The next post will discuss the second critical component of Digital Transformation – the Customer Journey.