eCRM: what to do before the single customer view?

There is a lot of confusion about what CRM, or eCRM, is or is not. There is a lot of hype around the panacea promises of CRM. Equally there is a lot of mistrust and wariness about these latest must-have acronyms.

However, there are a few things that everyone agrees on:
- Customer-centricity is the strategic imperative. CRM helps companies to understand and serve their customers in order to help acquire and retain them.
- An understanding of customer value by segments is vital in ensuring that CRM delivers a measurable return on investment
- Customers can be internal, external, business partners or consumers. CRM is not limited to B2B or B2C.
- CRM is not a technology thing, though technology is fundamental to making it work successfully. It is about people and processes.

Furthermore there is a single, incontrovertible fact: *you cannot do CRM without knowing who your customers are and having data about them.*

This simple fact has huge implications. It is this that is driving large systems integration and customer data unification projects. This is the Quest for the Holy Grail that is the ‘Single Customer View’. Without this it is not possible to deliver a seamless and consistent multi-channel experience to customers.

At the same time as organisations are grappling with these big projects, they are also launching digital presences – web, wireless and interactive TV customer interaction channels. These projects cannot afford to wait for the single customer view and yet organisations know that all channels, on and offline, need to be fully integrated if they are truly to deliver the required customer experience.

So what can you be doing now in the digital channels with an eye towards eventual integration with the customer mother ship?

1. Use the digital media to capture valuable customer data

Many web sites could improve their data capture success rates by 300% by re-examining their data capture practices and improving them. [for some ideas on best practice data capture have a look at the forum post at http://www.e-consultancy.com/forum/default.asp?v=662&p=1 and the replies to it]. Furthermore digital channels afford unprecedented opportunities to understand customer needs better and this is the key to delivering exceptional customer experiences and e-business success. For example, behavioural insight can be gained though:

- analysing users’ click stream data as they interact with digital presences giving a good indication of what people like and dislike, what works and what does not, what attracts them and what does not
- analysing users’ search terms on your site to help you understand what people are most interested in, what they may be having problems finding on the site, what their unmet needs might be
- a survey, questionnaire, competition or similar mechanism for soliciting user feedback to quickly and cost effectively deliver customer insight

2. Use online customer data to personalise the experience

In recent interviews we conducted with users of financial services sites, one user commented “If I can’t see all my accounts with you on one screen then forget it – I’ll go somewhere else”. Customers increasingly expect a personalised experience and one that saves them time and energy. This means, for example:

- you need to be able to uniquely identify online customers (persistent user cookies / log-in)
- you should implement personalisation basics such as pre-filled forms
- you should allow users access to their personal profiles, including profile management tools
- you should allow users to choose what they, as individuals, receive from the site (permission marketing)

3. Structure the data in such a way that it will integrate with other systems

Whilst waiting for the single customer view, there is no harm in creating a single digital customer view such that all digital offerings can provide a seamless customer experience. There should be a customer profile database and this should be designed, structured and formatted according to standards that will then integrate with what the offline business is doing. This not only minimises integration challenges but also ensures that the digital channels are not developed in isolation from the core business.

Anyone else have views on what to do before the single customer view? Good / bad experiences?

Aren't simple and obvious things often the hardest to do...? You are right to some degree that the process is simple but the reality is far more complicated.

Customer-centricity may be common practice and obvious to some but there are still many organisations that are structured not around customers but around product lines: retailers, manufacturers, financial services, fmcg etc. typically think and buy and report success and structure business processes around product line not around customers. Dell famously switched from organising themselves around product groups (e.g. desktops, laptops, servers etc.) to structuring what they did around customer groups (e.g. SOHO, SME, corporate, multi-national etc.). CRM / eCRM are therefore BIG enterprise wide challenges - customer data alone usually sits in many different silos within a corporation with each department jealously guarding access to it. The politicial and cultural barriers to change are considerable.

What your simplified analysis also fails to really capture is the notion of 'value' at the heart of CRM. Yes, CRM should deliver value to the user in terms of an improved experience, but the bottom line is that CRM must deliver value to the business. This requires an understanding of which customers are more valuable than others, how you therefore treat different customers differently, and how you try and migrate low value customers either into higher value customers or (if they are unprofitable) try and a) get rid of them in as nice a way as possible or b) find ways to reduce their cost to the business thereby making them worthwhile to have as customers. Frequent flyer cards are a classic example of valuing different customers differently. The more you are worth to the airline the more they put themselves out to please (= retain) you. Similar thing with credit cards.

The most important part is working out a customer value segmentation model that is right for the customer and right for the business strategy: you need to know that in order to work out what data you need to capture, how you will measure and report on it across channels, how you will use this taxonomy as a platform for personalisation etc.

Whilst I agree with you that channel usage is context-specific and the same customer's actions on one channel are unlikely to be mirrored on another, and their needs and desires are likely to be different, I think this makes it all the more important to integrate data and customer intelligence across channels. This does not mean the proposition is the same on different channels. Content can be served to web, phones and iTV from a single central server and yet presented very differently to suit the device and channel. Customer data should be held in a single place even if the way in which the customer interfaces with that data is different for each channel. If you don't integrate data then not only is it inefficient in terms of cost (managing multiple systems) but you will have no idea about the different ways that the same customers are interacting with your offering.

Recent research from retailers indicates that the more channels you offer a consumer the more he or she spends with you. However, to really milk the value you need to understand what channels are best for delivering what experience and offer to which customers. And the only way to do that is through an integrated cross-channel approach.

The point about integrating across multiple channels I
>don't agree with. Surely this is . A
>customer's
On 14:16:52 23 May 2001 dcjarvis wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Is it just me (being a common-sense usability chap) or is
>most of what is being bandied around about eCRM common
>knowledge. To me it seems like a simple process:
>
>1. Know your customers (using data and usability
>techniques eg log analysis, contextual enquiry etc.)
>2. Build effective customer experiences (using usability
>techniques- prototyping, testing etc)
>Capturing and analysing data should be a key part of the
>customer experience for the site owner anyway.
>3. Use the data to refine the experience
>
>...and off you go!
>
>In fact, sounds a lot like a decent product development
>methodology or a user-centred design process... calling it
>eCRM is just another buzzword to add to the multitude the
>industry forces clients to use everyday!
>
>The point about integrating across multiple channels I
>don't agree with. Surely this is context-specific. A
>customer's actions on one channel are unlikely to be
>mirrored on another, and their needs and desires are
>different.
>
>Just some thoughts...
>
>Cheers, d

Yep. That's sounds pretty good. Ever thought of becoming an eCRM consultant ;) ?

Just to pick up on 2 of your points:

1. Cross digital channel content items

You are right that the various channels require different content, design, interfaces and, generally, quite a different approach - in many cases the target audience is different. I was somewhat concerned to read in one of the trade journales of a company (which I won't mention) that was proudly showing of how accurately they had migrated their web site to iTV: tiny log in box and all on the homepage... Some people have not learned from the failure of Microsoft's WebTV experiment.

However, I still believe that all content items should come from the same database (or cluster of databases) to serve the various digital channels. In some cases the content items may only be relevant for one of the channels, in which case the database will flag that content item accordingly. In some cases the same content item will have different versions of itself formatted for the various channels e.g. product details or product imagery.

Or, imagine a restaurant review - it would be the same review of the same restaurant but different length versions depending if it was being served to web, phone or TV. If your content is properly stored and tagged there is no reason why it should not be served up as appropriate. And, yes, as you mention you can track usage specifically by channel or across channels - the metrics may be the same but the benchmarks or what is good or bad will often differ by channel.

The eCRM angle is that the *customer* data is the same irrespective of channel - the amount you might show might be different by channel but it is exactly the same data coming from the same place. The "single customer view"...

2. Stepping on the toes of the Management Consultants

Interactive agencies have little chance of competing with the Big 5's large scale CRM capabilities but that doesn't matter. CRM has had a bad name in the past because of its expense, the length of time the projects took (2yrs+) and the vague return on investment shown. That's Big 5 territory and they'll have to deal with proving the worth of large scale CRM if clients are to buy into it.

Meanwhile there is more than enough for interactive agencies to be doing in the field of eCRM that can be quicker, cheaper and deliver immediate benefits. There is much about eCRM that requires softer 'people' and communications skills as well as an absolutely up-to-date understanding of the digital media - and they continue to evolve apace. The big management consultancies are not known for being fleet of foot and good at more creative communications.

So, yes, there is increasing competition for similar parts of the pie but I think there is plenty of room for both to exist. The more interesting market space battle is between interactive agencies, advertising agencies and direct marketing agencies.

As you will know, many ad agencies and direct marketing companies have set up interactive subsidiaries, or bought web agencies, or created hybrids (e.g. ehsrealtime). It will interesting to see how this all shakes down... What do you think? Who will come out on top?

On 16:05:33 12 June 2001 dcjarvis wrote:
>Fairpoints all.
>
>So the issues are:
>
>> Re-positioning the enterprise to provide customer
>satisfaction rather than "products" (obviously
>not a flick of a switch initiative!)
>
>> Enabling the collection of customer data in every
>part of the organisation that has touchpoints with
>customers
>
>> Defining a customer value strategy along the axes of
>profitability and loyalty - i.e. divest customers who are
>not profitable and not loyal
>
>> Amalgamate and analyse data across channels
>
>> On the basis of customer analysis and channel info,
>decide upon levels of investment for customer retention
>and acquisition, and move forward using user-centred
>techniques
>
>One thing still bothers me though:
>"Content can be served to web, phones and iTV from a
>single central server and yet presented very differently
>to suit the device and channel"
>
>The likelihood that a single content item can be
>re-positioned for each of these channels is highly
>unlikely. As we find distinct roles for each of these
>channels, this will become even less commonplace. I agree
>that data has to be integrated – but is there not a
>place for distinct data analysis from each channel –
>as long as the metrics used are the same?
>
>Finally, I wonder what the role of the interactive agency
>is in this area as it is very much stepping on the toes of
>management consultants, with their skills in data
>warehousing, mining, modelling and customer evaluation.
>Interesting stuff though!
>
>Cheers, d