As leaders, it’s our job to convince people what these technologies will do for them, instead of being just another tool that makes life harder, not easier.
How do organisations go faster during digital transformation?
The biggest roadblock for organisations looking to accelerate is how to attempt new technologies, how to make them useful, or integrate them within the company’s existing ecosystem.
I’ve had clients tell me they have five different versions of the same thing; the UK uses a different version of an application than the Netherlands. Connecting all of those dots takes time and throws up problems. It’s the leaders who say we’re on this path, but there is nobody following them, and these technologies end up gathering dust. So as leaders, it’s our job to help people understand what these technologies will do for them, instead of being just another tool that makes life harder, not easier. If leaders can get that buy-in and consolidate how this can be used in a forward-looking manner, that’s when you can accelerate.
We need to be more innovative in putting our technologies together, so all the information that the company has about customers is in one data set and can be used to predict the future.
What is the most effective strategy to help clients enhance customer engagement and generate new revenue?
If we want to help clients engage with customers better, we need to be more innovative in putting our technologies together, so all the information that the company has about customers is in one data set and can be used to predict the future.
This data could be used to build recommendation systems, like those on Amazon or Netflix for example. You look at past customer experience engagement, analysing how the customer felt, whether they bought the product or not, and then devise a recommendation system. This way, company representatives can input variables and the system will tell them whether a particular customer is going to engage better if you offer them a discount, send them an email or call them.
All of these things will be automated at some point, but we’re not quite there yet. Organisations need to be moving towards this type of strategy, and it will help staff to understand customers better – whether customer A is motivated financially, or customer B is driven by the latest technology, or to what degree price is an issue. Building this into client systems creates personalised economic optimisation.
Data is ubiquitous today, it’s really more about how quickly it can be analysed, because that insight is what drives agility.
IVAYLO YORGOV
Managing Director
GemSeek
How can organisations become more agile and resilient?
There’s a lot of information available to organisations about agility, but a lot of companies have focused too much on collecting data. Data is ubiquitous today, it’s really more about how quickly it can be analysed, because that insight is what drives agility.
Knowledge management is critical in turning a team into a real-time process, for example, by integrating the CRM system with customer experience measurement systems so that when someone calls the contact centre, the agent can see all the information that the company has about that person. Putting this information together is helping organisations to be more agile.
Liberty Global were doing what is known in the industry as a ‘closed loop’ programme. Companies send out invites for customers to participate in a survey, the aim being to understand how those customers feel. They then ‘close the loop’ by contacting those customers about their feedback.
The limitation here is that you obviously can’t contact all of your customers every month, and even if you did, not every customer would reply. Perhaps 20 or 30% would respond, but that means you can’t scale this up. What we did was take the behavioural data about customers – what internet they use, what phone calls they make, how they use the product – and put that next to the customer satisfaction scores. We then built an algorithm that predicts how likely it is that each customer is happy, meaning you can contact those most likely to be unhappy. It worked really well, and decreased churn rate, which is a huge issue in telecoms.
GemSeek is an award-winning customer experience services consultancy with clients worldwide across telecommunications, healthcare, consumer, insurance & retail. GemSeek specialises in providing consulting and services that help organisations to predict customer behaviour and improve customer satisfaction and business results.