customer centria

The Customer Engagement & Experience Company

Customer Response Management

Date: 01/03/2012

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The strategic art of Customer Response Management

With the implementation of Multi-channel Integration and Framework, the complexities and challenges related to working with various channels are managed effectively. And next comes the most critical organisationcustomer conversation byte - customer response and customer feedback! This paper will talk about gathering and utilising customer response and feedback via the numerous channels available in today's time, and leveraging it productively to gain maximum benefits. When it's about understanding the customers' needs, wants, apprehensions and concerns there's only one secret - 'leveraging customer feedback fully'. And that is not limited to only collecting feedback, but analysing, managing and acting upon the data to improve the organisation-customer relationship. Today, customer feedback is overwhelming, sometimes streaming simultaneously from a large number of channels - in-person, call centre, surveys, email, social networking and mobile devices with new channels opening up each day. Organisations today, are dealing with a multi-channel response interface, and the challenge is to streamline the data coming in from various sources. The need is to understand how the various communication channels integrate and how the response received from customers is handled and exchanged by various channels. The nature of communication channels involved, varies from one vertical to another, for e.g. in a banking environment if the bank has a 'Core Banking System' in place with rich data containing valid email ids and mobile numbers, the banks would prefer to target the customers via Email and SMS, while in case of a telecom company, Call Centre could be a more lucrative option as that would turn out to be more cost effective, but challenges exist in either case. The biggest challenge in a multi-channel environment where marketing automation system is implemented for targeted campaigning, is seamless response capture, which will help organisations to measure the campaign effectiveness. Response received via every communication channel is in a different format, but the bigger challenge is to relate the response with campaign, and ensure that the response received is due to a particular campaign. This is where a strong integrated multi-channel framework comes into picture where the response received from various channels can be related to the campaign and logged in the response history for further analysis. Different campaign management systems have different ways of tracking the response and this is where Customer Centria comes into picture. Customer Centria liaises with various channel partners and provides an integrated solution for response management, which enables the customers to track the responses coming from multiple channels.

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Customer Centria helps an organisation in implementing end-to-end campaign management capability, which allows the organisations to reach their customer via multiple channels and at the same time provide the customer with multiple options that will allow organisations to not only track direct but also help them track inferred responses. Response management helps the organisation to track offer performance, segment performance, customer behaviour, contact v/s response ratio etc. Customer Centria shares its best practices for optimizing the cross channel response, as it helps organisations in obtaining not only the response rate ratios for all the channels, but also accomplish ROI for a particular campaign. The following sections in brief, state on account of response capture services which Customer Centria facilitate for most common channels, which are currently used across various industry verticals. The brief description provides an insight into what level of response can be captured when it comes to an individual channel and how it works when a channel integration framework is in place.

Response Management via Email

Email is one of the most popular channels these days, as the urban customer prefers to receive all the communication via electronic mail. It not only allows them to visit the emails as and when convenient, but also provide them sufficient information online and thus reduce the need to visit stores and shops. When it comes to managing customer response via email, the organisations have to decide what all responses need to be captured as in case of email there could be multi-level response capture

First level response like opens, views, click through, bounces etc. that provides an insight into customers' interest in the communication sent to him/her.

Second level responses, related to first level of responses like mail, open or click through etc.
The extent of response capture via email depends on the organisation; some organisations would opt for capturing the first level of response and based on that target customers via other channels. Similarly other organisations would wish to capture second level responses, which might lead to involvement of other channels like a ecommerce portal (in case of click-through) or outbound call centre (in case of a customer reply to the marketing communication). Customer Centria provides an end-to-end response management solution for email, as the first level of response can be provided via in-depth reports, allowing marketers to gauge the targeted customers' interest based on the action taken by customers on the communication received for e.g. Unique Views, Unique Clicks, Total Bounces Hard and Soft both etc. Customer Centria also provides custom response solutions to capture customers' interest, based on actual replies to the email or customer's action on the website as a result of click through or an inbound call to the call centre as a result of the email communication.

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Response Management via SMS

Like email, SMS also is one of the most popular and widely used communication channels due to mobile revolution and cost effectiveness. Typically, SMS is used widely for targeting a large segment of customers, keen on receiving messages on the move unlike emails. Response capture via SMS also could be multi-level and based on what level of response tracking organisations wish to carry out. Like email, SMS could also have a multi-level response capture

First level response capture could be based on the Delivery Report (DLR) received by the SMS service provider, which would provide organisations an account of the number of messages sent, received and not received.

Second level response capture are actual customer replies to the SMS, based on the keywords sent as part of the communication. These replies result in helping organisations to conclude customers' interest in the offer sent to him/her via SMS.
Again as in the case of email, the extent and level of response capture via SMS would depend on the organisations. Customer Centria provides an end-to-end solution for customer response management via SMS by providing services like contact history updates in case of first level of response capture via SMS or further contact management based on customers responding via keywords or customers calling inbound with requisite response code, which enables identification of campaign via which they were targeted.

Response Management via Call Centres

In a recent survey by CRM Daily, it was quite evident that to be competitive and customer centric, organisations need to have a sophisticated call centre, which would offer its customers the choice of as to how he/she would like to engage with the company. Call centre is one communication media, which provides the following three different service models

Immediate Assistance The immediate assistance service model is typically delivered by live agents in a call centre, but it can also be delivered via Web chat, and even through immediately escalated e-mail.

Deferred Assistance is typically provided again by live agents responding to e-mail and voice messages, although automated response applications remove the live agent from the process.

Engaging with company via self-service is typically delivered over the Web in the form of knowledge base information or over the phone via an IVR.
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The degree to which these three service models are integrated, determines how intelligently and cost-effectively a company can respond to a customer need. These service models usually are designed around proprietary hardware and software solutions in a silo fashion, with little to zero integration. Customer Centria allows organisations to integrate with any or all the above service models as the integrated customer response solution allows every customer contact to be evaluated based on the history and relationship of the customer with the company. In this way, companies can respond immediately to highest valued or highest priority customers, regardless of how they chose to contact the company (phone, e-mail or Web). Customer Centria's integrated response solutions will also enable the organisations to leverage their lead management systems via call centres, thus enabling end-to-end lead management and response capture for closed leads, which may or may not result in business thus providing apt reasons for the leads which got closed. Contact Centre today needs to be fully integrated with other commonly used channels like email and SMS, as interest shown by customers needs to be captured as leads. Based on target being existing customers or other prospects, the leads are generated in the associated lead management system, which is not only tightly integrated with the call centre application, but also with CRM that provides the information of existing customers. Customers like being recognised; hence such an integrated framework has become a necessity for all organisations who wish to implement marketing automation via campaign management.

Response Management via Web

Certain segment of customers is web savvy and prefers to receive offers communication via web. This prompts all large organisations to have B2C ecommerce portals, which not only enable customers to visit and spot offers but also avail those offers online. Personalised email communications with the appropriate links, allow the customers to land on the requisite portals and avail offers online. Tracking response of an offer availed online is quite challenging as it involves passing of campaign related parameters to the portal team who then have to maintain and track the response against the response code, which is campaign recognisable. Customer Centria help organisations execute campaigns and measure the responses based on

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The traffic that online offer brought to the business or website The portion of that traffic that converted into customers or serious prospects The amount of visibility the company received to build brand recognition The return on investment of the expense of the campaign versus the results
Customer Centria employ its best in-class response solutions, which enable organisations to easily track results for the online adverts. This solution would not only help measure responses, results and ROI for the effective online ads, it might also report ineffective communication on account of it being placed on the wrong section of a website thus allowing organisations to continuously improve customer's web experience.

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Internal Resources provision for Response Management

In any kind of response management solution, it's difficult to attain an end-to-end solution, which is 100% automatic, and the degree of 100% automation is based on what an organisation can provide to implement a response solution. The figure below shows that it might be possible to attain up to 95% of automation in case of existing multi-channel framework, but organisations may have to live with 5% of manual intervention when it comes to closed loop campaigns.

Knowledge Base
Track, Manage, Control Track, Manage, Control

Receive

Analyse

Sort

Route

Respond
95%
Auto

Multi-Channel Cross- Channel

Email

Web

AI-BasedParsing Self-learning Industry-leading accuracy Easily integrated Patented APR Best in class. modular solution

Templates

Semi-auto

SMS
Agents/Experts

IVR

Manual

Branch
5%

CRM, ERP, CTI, Databases...

Source - Attensity In a multi and cross channel environment it's difficult to achieve 100% automation and the extent of automation would depend on the organisation being able to provide all or most of the following internal resources while they look to implement an end-to-end campaign management solution Metrics and ratios Incentives and offers and means to fulfil them Purchaser or lead-generation criteria Customised landing pages Customised ad creative Customised e-mail creative Tracking codes (implemented for ad creative as well as on web pages) Delivery, tracking, and analysis systems Frequent data analysis and decision-making to retain or remove campaign components Transaction funnel (tweaks might need to be made to shopping carts or inquiry forms to help improve conversions) Call Centres/other customer service or sales inquiry management Specific plans for how to process and use any data captured, such as integration into a CRM (define) Re-marketing plans www.customercentria.com

Provision of above-mentioned resources will help Customer Centria to provide an end-to-end campaign management solution that will also allow proposing a solution, which will have workarounds in case any resource can't be provided as required.

Business Benefits of Response Tracking

Since organisations employ multiple channels when it comes to customer contact management, they reap various business benefits from response tracking done for various channels used for customers to respond to marketing communications. A list of benefits is as mentioned

Response tracking via mobile allows the marketers to track message delivery rate, response rate and sales conversion rate for a campaign thus resulting in better ROI.

Response tracking via emails allows marketers to track responses like mails opened, mails replied to, mails bounced thus allowing them to augment Know Your Customer (KYC) metrics by discarding customers who can't be contacted via emails and having more reliable contact data.

Similarly tracking actual responses via email results in locating the interested customers and further allows marketers to approach those customers via different touch points, leading to strong customer relationship and enriched data in CRM.

Response tracking via email also helps in strengthening the customer relationship via personalised communication, which helps the customer feel that organisations set high KYC standards.

Response tracking via web through personalised landing pages and personalised offers based on strategic customer segmentation allows organisations to understand customer behaviour and his/her inclination towards the offer.

Customer validation once the customer makes an inbound call is also result of the effective response tracking, as the CRM is enriched with customer data when an individual transforms from a prospect to a customer.

Response tracking allows organisations to drastically improve the response rates through personalisation and message tailoring.

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Multi-level response tracking involving multiple touch points enable organisations to achieve multi-tiered marketing initiatives.

Response tracking is not only useful in tracking the direct and inferred response, but might also be used to help organisations reap the benefits of Viral Marketing, resulting in customer retention and customer acquisition.

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In an existing multi-channel environment, organisations have the option of intermixing several other media platforms, for e.g. SMS promotions can be combined with radio, billboard and television ads, the existing response tracking framework can be extended to track responses from various other channels thus extending the channel span to communicate with the customers.

Create Campigns

Generate Reports

Program Management

Enhance ROI

Order Fulfillment

Manage List

Track Responses

The bottom line - Implementation of an end-to-end campaign management solution results in proper leads management, lifts in response rates, improves sales conversion leveraging internal resources and helps cut marketing costs considerably.

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On the whole, an organisation could have following benefits under various heads

Business Benefits
Reduced Operational Costs and Increased Productivity Redefined Customer Service Excellence Improved Control and Manageability

Technology Benefits
Based on Marketing Automation tool, modelling business processes and ensuring SLA adherence Multi and Cross Channel response and queue management Comprehensive batch and real time (custom) reporting and visibility into customer response processes Supporting multiple departments and multiple business units via single deployment Feeding from existing CRM, ERP, Web Logs etc. Gathering customer feedback is not just about identifying consumer concerns, but also about consolidating a concrete understanding of what the customer needs or wants. By capturing and structuring all feedback into a single centralised system and using it across the company, organisations can get access to valuable consumer insights. This helps organisations identify and acknowledge important trends and patterns in the consolidated data that contributes heavily to business and marketing decisions. We conclude the 3-part series that attempted to bring out the history and evolution of CRM, the integration of multi-channel framework and leveraging customer feedback to the maximum. It's only when all these factors complement each other and contribute extensively to the organisation-customer relation and conversations, that any company can achieve the desired business objectives and higher revenue generation apart from strong loyalty management.

About Customer Centria

Customer Centria (CC) is a global multi-channel customer engagement and experience company that enables enterprises in their customer engagement strategies by powering them with customer-centric products, solutions, services and consulting. CC helps create opportunities for brands to interact with customers enabling delightful experiences throughout the engagement lifecycle. CC offers a complete bouquet of services from marketing automation, analytics & insights, interactive marketing, virtual experiences to loyalty management. CC has proven capabilities across all major industries with proven track record and accomplished results in sectors such as Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Retail, Telecom and Consumer Goods.

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