Anyone seeking a foretaste of the future role of analytics in shaping the customer experience need look no further than last month's round table discussion hosted by TeleWare in association with Comms Dealer.
It is beyond argument that big data - universally acknowledged as a boon to the industry and a sector obsession - has brought with it real challenges when harnessing, segmenting and monetising the expanding sea of information that sits both within and outside an organisation's network. The round table discussion shone an overdue spotlight on the intrinsic potential of big data and the industry's efforts to fully realise the commercial value of deep and useful insights provided by analytics.
The issues revealed by the debate are as fundamental as the freedom of customers to persecute organisations that provide a bad contact experience. Disaffected clients can easily post negative social media reviews in real-time and switch to competitors at the drop of a hat. Not for nothing therefore will analytics and systems integration become a dominant theme. But what is to be the nature of the new reign?
"We work in the customer engagement contact centre world," commented Martin Taylor, CMO at Redwood Technologies. "We're seeing demand for voice-type control and service levels, such as monitoring and recording, applied across all channels including email, web chat and social. Customers want to achieve this without creating too many silos and inefficiency, and integrate more closely with information systems, particularly CRM. This is a business level decision rather than an IT function because it introduces more automation while reshaping the entire organisation."
Customer interactions have in the past been constrained to a traditional phone call, but digitalisation and social media have let loose the fall-out of a bad customer experience across numerous channels. Much of the impact of this multi-channel environment comes from how data is managed and handled. Not surprisingly, data analytics has assumed a unique potency in the industry's mind. "There is strength in understanding your customers quicker than anyone else and adapting to them," said Derek Watson, Managing Director at Aurora. "Knowing customers is your biggest asset, along with your speed of learning."
What also matters is how organisations react to their customers as individuals, and how the industry enables businesses to deliver an impeccable customer service. "The conversation is different, it's based on the company's aims and objectives," said Peter Gee, Managing Director at NIU Solutions. "We work with financial organisations. This sector is competitive and acquiring customers hinges on the digital customer experience. It's about how we can help their business as a trusted advisor. Technology is the enabler, not the answer. Customers see value and differentiation in this approach."
Analytics and the customer experience are inseparable and represent a new direction for the industry that will see data scrutinised with the sublime concentration of a scientist and the results applied in imaginative ways. What matters most is how the industry responds. Rob Quickenden, Chief Strategy Officer at Cisilion, cited one example of how the company is helping customers play the analytics trump card. "We're currently working with a large fitness company," he stated. "This is a competitive market and the organisation is struggling to keep members. It therefore wants to analyse how sales teams are interacting with the consumer base and how they integrate with Facebook and Twitter.
"But the social media team is not aligned to the sales department. Analytics are applied to sales calls only, while other contacts between staff and customers are unmeasured. That data is out there and we need a mechanism to join it up. Because of this we are seeing high level conversations outside of IT. It's about having an open infrastructure that harnesses every part of the customer journey. It's also about understanding not just the business's behaviour but also how consumer behaviour impacts their organisation."
Finding a way through the thickets of an information forest towards the sunny uplands of effective data analytics poses a strategic obstacle for any organisation. It's a difficulty TeleWare is addressing with gusto. "Joining up data with different medias across the whole customer journey, including information that sits outside of the organisation such as social media, is a challenge," stated Steve Haworth, CEO at TeleWare. "There is a lot of data external to businesses that can be pulled in."
The rapid rise of analytics is like a hit over the industry's head, powerful enough to cause a re-examination of traditional modes of operation and influential enough to redefine the customer experience and how that is best delivered. Why? Because those who live by the loyalty of their customers can easily die by their inability to give customers what they want, which is likely to be increasingly complex, according to Quickenden.
"One of our customers wants to integrate LinkedIn and their CRM system," he added. "They want a system that automatically updates itself to let them know when a key customer contact moves job. Losing a head of purchasing or CFO can have a big impact in the B2B market and affect relationships. This is how analytics and system cohesion works. Not having this information could give business rivals an edge, and also bring new opportunities for companies that have strong relationships with key people who move on."
Tightly integrated systems also enable organisations to become adept at giving customers what they want first time around and draw strength from the customer experience they offer. But strengthening their ability to deal with high numbers of contacts is a different matter altogether. "You can have qualified people dealing with a small number of enquiries, but what some of our customers in the health sector face, for example, is massive volumes of demand and the only way to scale the knowledge is to automate it," said Taylor. "You can't possibly provide a knowledge-based service at great scale."
The implications of automation may seem a distraction from the personalised intelligence offered by deeply segmented analytics but it is nonetheless a direction of the industry. "There is a rise in demand for self-service automation, especially in B2B," observed Graham Harris, Product Director at Daisy Wholesale. "In B2C this has already been delivered. We can book so much online for example and it's a painless experience. In B2B we will see growing demand for self-service interactions."
Just as intriguing is the gradual development of commodity-type products. It won't be long before big networking solutions will be built via a portal with drag and drop control of routers and security apps etc. "This 'build your own' network model with auto configuration is coming through," added Harris. "That's an interesting dynamic in the VAR space, very different from vendors telling VARs to skill up and make money from professional services."
The potential shrinkage of revenue steams derived from professional services adds more emphasis to the role of analytics in generating incremental growth based on a differentiated customer experience. Whether customer contacts are automated or personalised the quality of the experience remains crucial. "If you can't change the user experience customers will move elsewhere," added Gee. "The challenge is to service multiple customers. Agents are able to conduct a number of chats at the same time rather than one phone call. It's a shift that cannot be ignored. A big finance company we work with conducts 80 per cent of contacts online and 20 per cent on the phone.
"Budgets are tightening and competition is increasing. The hospitality sector for example is super competitive and there's pressure on IT budgets to come down and be more efficient. At the same time I've got to innovate and differentiate my business. Doing better with less money is a massive problem. You can't do it just through technology, you have to work on partnerships that help to sell and apply information and data."
All of the above are issues and challenges that no channel business can realistically avoid, and they must show courage in uncertain times. "Post-Brexit fear is affecting how people make decisions," pointed out Bill Smith, Director at STL Communications. "We are seeing an over reaction in the market that puts people off making decisions. In 2008 buyers sat on their hands which didn't help us sell. This will be the case for two tough-ish years and could be a catalyst for change as organisations seek to do things better and cheaper to mitigate the effects of Brexit."
Rather than default to a defensive position and cave in to economic insecurities in the wake of Brexit, channel firms must shun uncertainty and take positive action to harness the untapped data that exists. This agenda is already set by Zen's partners, noted Martin Clarke, Head of Channel Sales. "Our partners want greater access to our data and our analytics," he said. "There's a lot of data in the business but external access to detailed analytics has been limited. Now the partner base is showing big demand for more insights to be presented to CRM systems. This is an interesting dynamic and something we're keen to exploit."
This push for more insights is symptomatic of an industry in a state of permanent flux, and signifies that whoever finds differentiation, by whatever means, is in control. "Our industry has grown accustomed to rapid change but it is increasingly difficult to differentiate against competitors and generate revenue by monetising our offerings," stated Mark Rosson, Managing Director at Connect North. "The smart organisations will embrace analytics as a means of getting closer to customers and partners, both of which are ultimately our most valuable business assets."
The rise of data analytics is a stroke of good fortune for the channel, and a welcome antidote to a number of challenges that is starting to deliver results. Sensing the way the wind is blowing, Haworth showed a determination to lead the industry. "We're investing heavily in analytics," he said. "The capability to analyse data at a granular level, understand individual preferences and drive recurring revenue will increase the value of an organisation. It's about rich data and knowing how to segment it in the right way. The challenge is working out where that value lies, how we use data, what can be charged and where that money comes from. As well as investing in the analytics piece TeleWare is betting heavily on Skype for Business. We see a massive industry shift into the IT world, away from pure comms."•