A contact strategy from the holidays…

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Chris Warburton

Now is the end of the year and the time when many of us send good wishes to our family, friends, and colleagues.  It is after all a good time to get in contact with folks and also send across your latest contact details.

However this year, for me, a couple of trends really stuck out.
1.  Everyone is pretty much moving to sending cards or messages online
2.  People are changing their online contact details with ever greater frequency

Your ‘real card’ is more likely to be an ‘eCard’.
In the last couple of years we seem to have seen an acceleration in the number of eCards/emails sent with a corresponding reduction in physical/’real’ cards received.  This year we reached a new record, a turning point maybe.

My lawyer, real estate agent and financial adviser, all sent ‘real’ cards, however for most family and friends, it was simply a nice email or eCard with a message.

Now I am not saying that lawyers, real estate agents and financial advisors do not genuinely just like me for who I am…..they are nice people too after all.  It just seems we are reaching a turning point in terms of email adoption and wider acceptance of electronic alternatives for personal communication.  The ‘eConversion’ is almost complete.

The ‘ever changing addressbook’.
The other trend that was apparent was the increasing number address changes.  It seems we all now have multiple email addresses and these are changing on a more frequent basis that ever before…. moving companies, changing email providers…… it is moving every year, all the time.

However in my address book (and in most customer contact systems I have seen) there is an underlying assumption that there is a unique set of records or attributes that describes your address.  There is a space for home, work address, phone and email, this is it….the ‘location’, to find you.

However today and especially online, it seems we are in a constant state of flux, everyone is moving, using multiple email addresses, adding and deleting accounts etc.  The traditional contact and address book paradigm is struggling to keep up.

Meanwhile back at the office.
So there are a couple of thoughts for the new year.

1.  The eConversion of the wider population, the one we discussed for the last 10 years, is almost complete. As such we must all have a robust eCare strategy, it is going to accelerate and become ever more important.  (… put another way, when your own family is preferring to send eCards, you know you ‘gotta have’ a robust eCare strategy)

2.  Increasing the flexibility in recording and retaining contact details will become increasing important. These are a flow of locations to find someone, not an absolute point or destination.  It will evolve over time and we need to be ready for this.

Best wishes for the new year everyone

……

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Marketing, Analytics and Big Data

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Chris Warburton

This week I was able to spend some time at an American Marketing Association roundtable, on the future of data analytics.  Lots of good people there and it was a valuable insight into data analytics applied to different business function.

Many of the models and analytical techniques are very similar, the difference simply being a shift in the problem being solved for.  Ie will this consumer purchase (y/n?) vs will this consumer default (y/n?) and all the variations in between.  It was very familiar.

Plenty of discussion around unstructured data and social media.  Social media, unstructured data analysis and the ‘Big Data’ it creates is clearly the current ‘buzz’.

Although this topic is intellectually interesting it was also clear people have day jobs.  I felt this tempered excitement a bit.  After all in the real day to day world, targets need to be met, acquisition campaigns built and new business won.

The discussion actually felt a bit like the early days of the internet… everyone knows it will be a big opportunity, but it is not quite there yet and there are more pressing immediate priorities.

Big data is of course not information, but everyone has the sense there is value there… if only we could easily create structure, valuable information and insight could be extracted….

I do believe this is a huge opportunity, however just like the early days of the internet, we may need to think about this in a new way.

The current focus is on collecting as much information as possible (often unstructured) and then use techniques to create meaningful structured data.  There is a lot of noise to eliminate and complexity to overcome in order to process…. it is the proverbial ‘needle in a haystack’.

However as the science develops a more efficient approach will evolve.  Rather than analyze data after the fact, techniques are needed to create more useful (structured) data upstream and at point of creation.

Just as in the internet example, it will mean embedding data gathering intrinsically as part of day to day business, with process redesign to help facilitate.  Data will be an output, not a by product, of any process.

The issue is this is difficult implement and any data gathering needs to be seamless for the consumer.   It will require expertise and investment….. but for the pioneering companies that get this right, the volume of quality of data will be dramatically improved.

Targeted marketing to a degree we have not previously seen will be created….. a new breed of companies will be born.

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Collections is truly customer friendly

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Chris Warburton

This week I have had some great conversations on the nature of collections and its link to a positive customer experience.

In a company the collections process frequently has negative perceptions associated with it.  However at its core the process is about helping customers and solving their issues….it really is truly customer focused.

Used correctly and supported, there is also opportunity to not only help individual customers but also provide the insight to help improve the entire customer experience, helping retain high value customers. (in addition to reducing expense)

Talking with a wider audience, this concept clearly challenges some existing perceptions and requires looking at the customer lifecycle holistically across organisations.   (happy to explain more if needed)

However once explained there has been some great support…. has been really good to hear positive comments, and obviously great for improving customer experience long term.

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