How to Predict Customer Needs

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Customer decisioning is a field that focuses on using each piece of customer interaction history to help the organisation deliver the next best and most relevant action for that customer. It’s smart, because improving relevancy drives growth and does it in a sustainable way without a massive paid media budget. Telcos and big banks have been trying to implement decisioning programs for years, some with success, some not. The ones who have been able to implement it successfully have been able to drive an additional 100-200 million in revenue a year. Sounds great right?

The challenge is…most organisations are still relatively product or business unit centric and operating in silos competing against each other. So, it takes a lot of experience, patience and perseverance to implement a customer decisioning program successfully as it interfaces with many of the core departments.

My next guest Pete Avery has implemented some of the largest customer decisioning programs in the world. His passion for the space has driven him all over the world implementing massive programs for enormous organisations like Verizon in the US, O2 and Orange in the UK and Vodafone in Spain as well as many large companies in Australia like Suncorp and Westpac.

We explored:

1.???? Customer decisioning and the massive business impact it can have

2.???? How to implement it

3.???? Overcoming internal barriers

4.???? How to get executive support

5.???? How AI will make decisioning a whole lot easier.

If you would prefer to continue reading, scroll past the video for the core insights

8 Top Insights

1) Focus on improving relevance over personalisation

There is a difference between personalisation and relevance. You can personalise product offers as much as you like but if it’s not relevant to your customers it’s not going to be effective. The intent behind customer decisioning is about driving the most relevant next best action which drives great business outcomes vs personalising product offers. The mindset is vastly differently. Instead of “which product do I put in front of the customer next”…it should be “what’s the next best action to take with this customer”.

2) The potential to deliver $200 million per year of increased revenue

Pete starting working in this space 20 years ago working with O2 in the UK to deliver a customer decisioning program that delivered approximately $200 million of additional revenue per year over the first 10 years. The impact organisations have been able to have really depends on the size and scale of the business, the number of customers and the number of products. These days most banks and telecommunication companies have attempted to implement a customer decisioning program, some successful others not. But the carrot is there for those who can make it happen.

3) Getting customer interaction data centralised is a game changer

Many organisations are still being held back by fragmented data sitting in silos, which holds back your ability to deliver better customer experiences overall. When it comes to fuelling a customer decisioning program it’s vital to have a single view of the customer, a centralised operational view that every team is working from. So every time a customer interacts with you regardless of the channel, that data is stored in the same place to build more comprehensive intelligence about customers and serve them better. This enables companies to deliver more relevant experiences. ?Relevancy drives clicks and revenue.

4) Getting colleagues with product centric mindsets on board

The most common barrier to any customer experience program is old school product centric mindsets and siloed ways of working. The trouble is if you go too hard in presenting that a customer centric approach is the smarter way of doing things, you can get heavy resistance, because to them it feels like you’re saying my god is better than your god. It's not ideal but they can co-exist, so you need to find a way to show them how it complements what they are doing vs competing with them. Put simply, help them find customers for their products. The best way to get traction is by developing a pilot program, show them how it helps them hit their KPIs and how it’s supporting them rather than taking away control.

5) CMO/CCO and CTO have to be totally aligned in CX projects

If you’re a CMO or Chief Customer officer trying to drive a customer decisioning program the most important person to get in the boat with you is your equivalent in IT, either the CTO or CIO. If there is any animosity between the two (which is common) it needs to be addressed head-on, otherwise the program wont work. Sometimes marketers are tempted to try and buy tech without IT, it simply doesn’t work, the CMO and CTO need to be married on this stuff.

6) Getting executive buy-in

A customer decisioning project will interface with most of the core departments, so having executive support is crucial. You need to connect the dots between the capability you’re proposing and each executives objectives, KPIs and what their bonussed on to answer what’s in it for me? Teaming up with their key Lieutenants is important because they trust their team and refer to them. So, getting those key Lieutenants allocated to your project and involved early on is really critical. It’s much better to be doing it with them, not to them. It also pays to engage stakeholders at different levels even down to the front line customer service staff because ultimately if they can’t help action the program it wont happen.

7) Forcing transformation doesn’t work

Transformation is a slow and painful process. It’s tempting sometimes to force it to get things happening, but you can’t, it simply doesn’t work. Otherwise, internal blockers will back-channel you and become a negative voice, resisting it, undermining it and de-prioritising it. You have to put yourself in their shoes, it could be adding a large amount of work for them so you have to be empathetic, patient and collaborate with them. Really listen to what’s being said, but also more importantly…what’s not being said.

8) AI will supercharge customer decisioning

At it’s core decisioning is based on data modelling so it has been a testing ground for AI for quite some time. Some really interesting enhancements that Pete pointed out are 1) Proposition development. For example it will allow you to go from developing 20 messaging variants for a customer to 1000’s, which will help massively increase the relevancy of messaging to customers. 2) Awesome Chatbot experiences. Most Chatbot experiences up until now have been very ordinary. However, if a chatbot is fed your own data from a customer decisioning program, powered by AI, it will be the most amazing chat experience you’ve ever had. And those type of experiences shouldn’t be too far away.

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About me

I’ve spent the last 20 years working on digital transformation and CX projects all around the globe with brands like Samsung, Virgin, Lexus, eBay, Australian Air Force as well as being Head of Brand and Digital CX at a professional football team. If you would like to get in touch or have any questions:

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