CRM evolution, multi-channel integration and customer response management

customer centria
The Customer Engagement & Experience Company

DECODING CUSTOMER RESPONSES...
DELIVERING DELIGHT

Date: 11/04/2012

www.customercentria.com

customer centria

The Evolution and
growth of CRM


Summary

Progressive customer relationships define the world for today's organisations. Companies in the current state of
affairs operate in a tightly knit world of conversations in the form of feedback and criticism coming from every
corner - offline and online – through various channels. How do we streamline all this data and make it more
organisation-friendly to yield the maximum benefits! These answers are what we aspire to achieve from this
Thought Paper.

The purpose of this Paper is to highlight the need for a Multi-Channel Marketing Framework and Response
Tracking mechanism, all seamlessly tied up, given the current scenario of Marketing Automation, in whatever
avatar, being the norm, not the exception. It is essential to have a single customer view, resulting in effective one-
to-one marketing dialog with today's tech savvy customers via multiple channels. This Thought paper is divided
into 3 parts

The Evolution and growth of CRM
Multi-channel Integration, and
Customer Response Management

The Evolution and growth of CRM, provides a line of sight into the
journey of the relationship between customer and organisation. The
section aims to explain the change, which has taken place not only in
terms of technology and marketing, but also in terms of lateral
thinking on the part of the modern organisation. Destination CRM
was not easy to attain due to various challenges, which started from
quality of information to the way in which information was stored.

The second part, Multi-Channel Integration, provides an in-depth
account on the approach to a Multi-Channel marketing framework,
the challenges organisations typically face during implementation
and the organisation wide they would reap once it’s implemented.

And in conclusion, Customer Response Management, the last
section, emphasises on the criticality of implementing and
integrating Customer Response Management, and the role that
Customer Centria can play, in delivering an end-to-end response
management solution in a well-integrated Multi-Channel
environment.


CRM: The Evolution
The present is incomplete without the past – and that stands true for technology as well. To understand the
significance and existence of the current marketing strategies and channels, it is imperative to look at the entire
evolution of customer-organisation relationship as a tale, contemplating on vital junctures to understand the
route. Let’s start with the Evolution of CRM

‘Organisation-Customer Relationship’: As perceived historically
Once upon a time, customers needed organisations, but then competition struck, and consumers got empowered
with the power of choice. Today, businesses depend on people-to-people and business-to-business interaction
and the game has changed for many from B2C to C2C. There is no room for obsolete communication channels and
out-dated customer management technologies, because the consumers have moved on and it is time for
marketers to wake up and smell the coffee.

In today’s customer oriented market where strong relationships with the customer is the cornerstone for building
loyalty and thus ROI, any company, organisation or an institution has to be geared towards a strong framework
supporting integration of disparate data sources and marketing channels with preferred Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) solution.

‘Integration’ in today’s context is now inextricably linked to the entire marketing operation framework, which
would include marketing channels, transaction systems, data warehouses/data marts etc. And so, when it comes
to leveraging customer data across many disparate sources and opportunities, seamlessly aggregated marketing
machinery is essential for an effectual marketing dialog with customer.

In the early 90’s, organisations were apprehensive about Data Warehouse implementations
because of common myths like –

The merging of current customer data with secondary sources ultimately hurts the customer
Customer profiling may lead to more customised service and hence reduced consumer value
Data warehouses reduce organisational productivity and hurts organisational image
Data warehouse increases waste and harm the environment
It’s difficult to find ROI on the Data warehouse
Data warehouse requires an engineering approach and hence is resource and time intensive


Similarly marketers earlier were apprehensive about using multiple channels when it came to targeted
campaigning because of common myths like –

Most loyal customers prefer interacting via one channel
Most people buy and shop via one channel
Most people do not like direct mails
Online marketing cannibalises offline efforts
55 plus audience is not web savvy
Becoming a multi-channel company does not require restructuring
Each channel is a separate user experience

Apparently with ever growing transactional data, organisations felt the need to adhere to a solution, which will
provide clean, transformed and catalogued data for use by managers and other business professionals for data
mining, online analytical processing, market research and decision support. Data warehouse was one such
solution, which when implemented would provide holistic view of the historical data and this is where the
evolution of CRM commenced.

As organisations started turning towards data warehousing solutions to get a centralised view of historical data
combined from various sources, organisations started to realise that just doing BI and OLAP reporting was not
going to be enough to achieve what was required to build a marketing dialog with customers build a strong
customer relationship.

This was the time when organisations started feeling the need for establishing a framework, which could leverage
the data warehouse to build strong customer relationship model as OLAP reports analyses resulted in confirming
a fact that 'All customers are not equal', which spurred an evolution of 'Customer Relationship
Management'.

Why the Evolution?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a broadly recognised, widely implemented strategy for
managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to
organise, automate, and synchronise business processes — principally sales activities, but also those for
marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients,
nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of
marketing and client service. CRM denotes a company-wide business strategy embracing all client-facing
departments and even beyond. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology – all
work together to increase profitability, and reduce operational costs.


CRM and the Data Warehouse

The key challenge for business today is implementing an information infrastructure that enables rapid responses
to competitive pressures and the capability to survive into the future.

Corporate strategies that impact customer relationships, and the management and application of customer data
to business operation - CRM for short - are dependent on an information superstructure comprised of various
technologies that enable organisations to store, access, analyse, and manipulate vast amounts of customer data.
Most organisations with large numbers of customers to manage, frequently in the thousands or millions, require
a combination of sophisticated technologies to implement CRM.

One of the major contributing technology areas to CRM is ‘Data Warehouse’, which facilitate handling of a range
of CRM-oriented functions like –

Data storage
Database queries
Value analysis
Mathematical models for predictive analysis
Analytics

Thus for a CRM to evolve, data warehouse have become core component of doing business, as well as building
block for a corporate CRM strategy. This technology is a prerequisite for the level of one-on-one customer
relationships that can turn information into a company's most important resource.


CRM and Marketing Automation

Once CRM took shape post evolution, the next challenge was to have a framework, which will use CRM to provide
the automation and analytical insight to move more prospect relationships into customer relationships and
retain existing customer relationships.

A typical CRM roadmap will have following milestones –

1 Analysis of the current state of customer interactions

2 Predicting the future course of customer interactions

3 Developing the plan of action to meet the predicted future course

4 Building and presenting the business case to secure CRM project funding

To attain the above roadmap, need for a 'Marketing Automation System' was felt to provide the following benefit

Increased marketing effectiveness
Deliver more sales ready-leads to sales teams
Nurture prospects so they move through the channel faster
Measure the marketing influence on opportunities in the focus
Provide marketing accountability and ROI
Ensure that marketing only adds validated, standardised data into the CRM


All this can be achieved via focussed 'Marketing Campaigns' that are measurable, leverage cleaner, richer data
and produce predictably great results. Marketing automation not only brings efficiency through automation and
effectiveness through better execution, it also brings a new level of measurability to marketing.

Marketing Automation solution brings the unprecedented ability to define business rules to connect marketing
campaigns and programs to sales opportunities, so the precise impact of marketing on the business results can be
measured. With the costs entered into the campaign definition, one can even measure the ROI and cost per
lead/contact.

Marketing Automation software is a powerful tool that can help an organisation to become more efficient,
conduct successful marketing campaigns, reach the most profitable customers, build long-lasting relationships,
better understand product and market dynamics, and measure the productivity of marketing operations.

Marketing Automation — at its most fundamental level was developed to help marketers' better target and
execute one-to-one communication with key prospects within the context of demand generation efforts,
simultaneously orchestrating and tracking marketing resources against this activity. CRM consolidates a great
deal of information about prospects and customers; however, it provides virtually no framework or tools for true
nurturing of earlier-stage prospects, and it definitely is not a communication platform. Marketing automation
leverages CRM and addresses these gaps, but it then presents new capabilities for marketers that enable them to
take their demand generation programs to the next level.

Marketing automation software's unique design helps manage relationships with the past, present and future
clients, consultants, contractors, and even competitors, to ensure that no opportunity for acquiring a new project
is overlooked. There are five core areas of functionality that are essential for any good marketing automation
system. All the five are listed below –

1 Contact Data Integration 2 Response Management 3 Lead Management

4 Campaign Automation 5 Marketing Business Intelligence


Marketing Automation and Marketing Channels

Now that marketing automation gained prominence and campaign management became inevitable, the
challenge for organisations was identifying the best way of communicating with the customers so that they get the
right offers at the right time and that would have happened without reaching customers via predominant medium
called 'Channel'.
With the advent of technology and ease of using it, today there are various channels to reach customers based on
their preference and liking for a particular channel.

Some of the most commonly used channels today include Email, SMS, Call Centre (Inbound and Outbound),
Direct Mailers, Print Media, TV, Radio, Billing Systems, POS, and ATM etc. All channels are not applicable to all
verticals, but most of them would have some channels in common for e.g. an Email, SMS or Call Centre.

Leveraging the potential of existing channels to their maximum capacity and ability was the next challenge
organisations faced, as the modern customer was very particular about the communication and its mode as well.
Selecting the most preferred channel for the target customers was top priority, as a varied choice of
communication channels also meant intelligent decision-making on part of the marketers. This is where the
Campaign Management component of Marketing Automation plays an important role, running campaigns that
result in data enrichment and address the right customers.


The evolution of marketing channels enabled personalised communication in various ways for e.g. Promotions,
Personalised offers, Anniversary/Birthday Wishes, Loyalty related updates and lots more. The idea was to keep in
touch with the customer, and at the same time encourage him to buy what he likes and also what he/she 'might'
like. This approach led to a communication revolution, as organisations adopted Channel Marketing Strategies
that allowed organisations to make choice of channels based on following factors:

For organisations, channels have became the next big medium to reach their consumers – a tool with the power to
motivate and inspire their existing customers to buy their products and prospective customers to consider their
brands. Channel strategy includes recommendations for both identifying and managing channel partners.
Channel marketing is a dynamic and complex arena where mistakes can prove costly and extremely difficult to
correct.

To formulate and execute a channel strategy, organisations must follow these steps:

1 Understand the channels that are available.

2 Identify the need, based on organisation's objectives and the preferences
of customers.

3 Generate a list of likely channel partners.

4 Recruit channel partners to work with.

5 Manage the channel partners on an on-going basis.


Bottomline:

We saw the evolution of CRM from a Data Warehouse to its smart utilisation for implementing Marketing
Automation. With the growing acceptance of CRM and Marketing Automation, organisations opted for Multi-
Channel Campaigns, and some obvious questions popped up:

Are you engaging your audience with targeted, relevant and personalised content?
Are you delivering your message through your customer’s preferred media?


customer centria

Multi-channel
Customer Management


How to channel the process of Multi-Channel Integration
Moving on from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and its significance in the lifecycle of an
organisation, the journey gets more challenging and innovative. With the evolution of CRM and Marketing
Automation, various factors came into play, affecting marketing decisions and campaign management. The
dynamics of the game have changed radically, and today technology, user expectations, and stiff competition, are
increasingly forcing enterprises to support their customer service operations through various effective delivery
channels. It all started with walk-ins, leading to a strong dependency on call centres – but in current times, the
proliferation of the Web has inflated customer expectations, as they want their requests – whether information
related or service related - to be fulfilled fast, almost real-time.

Considering these factors, managing customer relationships, is deeply connected to marketing strategies, with
an aim to generate a 360-degree view of the consumer.

Websites, email, direct mail, text messaging, and call centres are all key elements to an integrated marketing
program, but a coordinated multi-channel program takes it to the next level by incorporating data and new
marketing technology for better response rates. Technology, customer expectations, and competitive forces, are
increasingly compelling enterprises to support customer service operations through several delivery channels.

80% of shoppers are more likely to do business with a
retailer who offers them easy and flexible interaction
across all channels by means of Multi-Channel
Integration. At the same time, 70% of all retailers find
cross-channel customers more profitable because they
spend more - Recent NCR Poll

Multi-Channel Customer Management covers the design,
deployment, coordination, and evaluation of channels through which
enterprises and customers interact, with the goal of enhancing
customer value through effective customer acquisition, retention, and
development.

An enterprise comes across the following prominent challenges when
it comes to designing a multi-channel framework for customer
management :


1. Data Integration across Channels
Enterprises typically viewed each delivery channel as a separate entity. However, with each delivery channel being
separate and operating in isolation, each with its own data, leveraging information across a multitude of customer
contact channels was not possible. Neither was it possible to provide a consistent customer service experience. Due
to lack of a single information repository, companies traditionally spent large amounts of time and money writing
integration programs to communicate between disparate systems.
In such a complex setup, the systems will rarely operate in real time, delaying data synchronization. This can cause
embarrassment to companies and aggravation to customers, when updates to one channel are not reflected
immediately in the others.

The second issue is that it adds overhead. The integration must be implemented, administered, and maintained
independently of the actual customer service applications for each delivery channel. The problem, complexity and
costs are magnified each time a change is made to a channel application.

To resolve this issue, multi-channel integration is imperative. The ideal position for a firm would be to have
complete Customer Data Integration (CDI), or an integrated, single view of the customer across the channels. The
ideal database would depict which channel(s) each customer accessed during each stage of the decision process,
including competitors' channels.
In turn, CDI gives rise to the following questions:

Which data needs to be integrated?
Is it sufficient to integrate purchase data only, or should search data also be integrated?
Which marketing activities benefit from integration?
Cross selling is an obvious beneficiary, but what about other marketing activities benefit?
What is an acceptable level of data integration? Is it 100% necessary?
Does data integration pay off?
Is it worth the investment to derive a single view of the customer?

2. Understanding Customer Behaviour-time
Managers must understand how customers choose channels and what impact those choices have on their overall
buying patterns. Therefore, the key questions pertaining to customer choice include the following:
In turn, CDI gives rise to the following questions:

What determines customer channel choices? What channel attributes are important?
Do marketing communications influence channel choice?
Is a multi-channel approach means to segment customers? That is, are there distinct segments of
consumers who use various channels and combinations of channels?
Do customers make channel decisions according to the channel or the firm?
Does the customer first say, “I will check out a few websites of retailers that sell HDTVs,” or does he/she
say, “I will check out Sony’s website, then go to the store to get a better look”? Similarly, during the search
stage, do customers consider firms at all?
What is the impact of the multi-channel environment on customer loyalty?
Does a multi-channel strategy grow sales for the firm?


3. Channel Evaluation
When the firm has gathered data and obtained an understanding of the consumer decision process, it can
evaluate channel performance. The key questions in this step include the following:
What is the contribution of an additional channel to the firm? If the firm were to add a channel, what
impact would it have on sales and profits?
What is the contribution of each existing channel? This input can be difficult to assess when the
contribution of a channel emerges during the search phase and the company lacks an integrated database of
search and purchase across customers.
What channels synergise best with others? The full impact of the firm’s set of channels should be more than
the sum of the parts, and synergies should exist, but which are the best?

4. Allocation of Resources across channels
The firm's channel policy is manifested in its resource allocation. Therefore, key questions include the following:
What is the optimal channel mix?
How necessary is a web presence?
What is the impact when channels are removed or downsized?
How should marketing resources be allocated across channels?
How much should be spent designing and developing each channel, and should advertising and
promotional activities be designed to drive customers to specific channels, or should they be channel
neutral?
What determines the equilibrium of channel structure in an industry? Should all firms offer the same
channels to customers? Will firms differentiate their channel strategies?

5. Organisation Structure and Cross Channel co-ordination
According to US online marketers surveyed in June by an interactive marketing agency Zeta
Interactive, their organisational structure was the top problem, suggesting many companies
are still keeping marketing activities soloed rather than working to coordinate them.
Technology and the problems of working with multiple vendors and agencies were also an
issue, along with a simple lack of cross-channel expertise.

While most marketers know the benefits of channel integration, the limitations of a soloed organisation are
currently the primary reason for companies not integrating their marketing efforts. It’s tough for managers to co-
ordinate the objectives, design, and deployment of channels. The dilemma is the degree of channel co-ordination
that can range from complete separation to full co-ordination.


6. Current Technology
Investment and extensive usage of technology is another major factor, which impacts multi-channel integration, as
many enterprises have already invested profoundly in technologies that support separate systems. To connect all of
them would mean implementing integration at the enterprise level, which might demand a technology change that
involves a major cost.

7. Cross Channel Expertise
An emarketer report revealed that 43.3% of senior marketers in the United States consider cross-channel
coordination of marketing campaigns as extremely vital and 46.4% consider it as vital.

One of the major problems that marketers face when firms go for enterprise-wide channel integration is lack of
cross channel expertise on part of marketers. This results in resistance to multi-channel integration as touch points
are not lucid and ease of moving from one channel to another is not known.

Marketers must overcome their own organisations’ hurdles to cross-channel integration in order to effectively
achieve their goals, breaking down structural silos and educating themselves about integrated marketing best
practices to overcome other logistical challenges and achieve coordinated campaigns.


Approach
A growing segment of customers, today demands lower prices, higher quality, better selection, and round-the-clock
access. They expect to reach organisations (banks, retailers etc.) through all possible channels. Organisations by
now have inferred the need for customer communication via multiple channels and realised the necessity of
reaching customers via multiple channels. But the challenge lies in setting up a centralised environment to develop,
execute and monitor campaigns across multiple channels which will allow them to achieve better visibility into
effectiveness of marketing spend.

As mentioned earlier in the document, websites, email, direct mail, text messaging, and call centres are all key
elements to an integrated marketing program, but a coordinated multi-channel program takes it to the next level by
incorporating data and new marketing technology for better response rates.

@ Campign
Management
Planning
(Marketing Calendar)
Direct Mobile
Mail E-Messaging Devices

Outbound channels Contact
Optimization

Centralized
Centralised
Offer decision engine
Management Budgeting
- Centralized business rules
Customers - Arbitration logic
- Business constraints
Inbound channels
- Customer contact policies

Interaction
Management
Branches/ Contact
Stores Centers Websites

Operational Analytical
Data Store Data Store

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

Integrate Inbound and Outbound Marketing Programs
“Marketers know they need to execute multi-channel programs to reach their target audience
with a tailored message at the right time using the right media. Their biggest challenge to all but
the simplest of programs is architecting and executing in a manner that minimises the cost and
complexities that are inherent when you deploy with varied work flows, multiple data processes
and vendors for each channel.”
- Philip Chischportich, CEO of Conversen, a leading multi-channel technology firm.


The challenges and complexity of multi-channel marketing can be overwhelming, but before organisations take
to an approach, there are four key steps which prove useful in laying a strong foundation to the approach –

Select a multi-channel strategy that creates an advantage and benefit for your consumers, such as the
ability to check the availability of an item prior to visiting the store.
Define a Multi-Channel network architecture that clarifies channel roles and investment priorities from
customer value-based perspective
Manage customer experience seamlessly on a cross-channel basis and consistently deliver the brand
promise
Build capabilities needed to market a multi-channel enterprise – this can be achieved by making sure that
CRM capabilities enable multi-channel management

Multi-Channel Customer Management Framework
Organisations must follow an approach, which will enable them to do the following:

Assess their present state of multi-channel capabilities to identify areas within their business and IT
landscape that can be optimised for improving the multi-channel capability.
Assess their present state of channel integration across people, processes and technologies to identify
potential gaps and challenges in the individual channels.
Define the future state, based on the current level of multi-channel maturity and customers' business goals
Evaluate the scalability and relevance of the existing systems/technologies with respect to the new multi-
channel requirements
Formulate a transformation and technical roadmap for implementation of the defined multi-channel
strategy
Implement the defined multi-channel initiatives
Monitor, support and perform continuous improvements

A typical approach that organisations can take to implement multi-channel integration is shown below -

A Framework for Multichannel Customer Management

Consumer Channel Perceptions and Preference

Search Purchase After Sales
Post
Evaluation
Channel Ak Channel Ak Channel Ak
Problem
Recognition
Channel Bk Channel Bk Channel Bk Data

Channel Strategy Channel
Evaluation

Channel Coordination Resource Allocation
- Price, Production, Promotion - Channel selection
- Design, Distribution, Service - Investment

SOURCE: Adapted from Blattberg, Kim and Neslin (2006).


The above figure shows a framework that joins the customer's and the firm's decision processes.

Step 1 - Customer progresses through need recognition, information search, purchase, and after-sales service. For
example, a customer may realise he or she needs life insurance. The customer searches various channels for
information about life insurance, decides on which channel to make the purchase, and then receives sales support
(advice on increased coverage, etc.) via a particular channel.

Step 2 - First, customer perceptions and preferences drive channel choices (e.g., the customer may prefer the
Internet for search because it is easy to use).

Step 3 - Second, the customer learns from and evaluates his or her experiences, which feed back into the
perceptions and preferences that guide his or her next shopping task (e.g., the customer may learn that the Internet
search did not answer all the important questions).

Step 4 - Third, the customer chooses both channels (A or B) and firms (k), so from the customer's perspective, it's a
two-dimensional choice.

Typically, the management decision process starts with data generated by the customer decision process. These
data are at the customer level—what channel(s) did the customer use for which purpose, and what did he or she
purchase? Consistent with the emphasis on the customer, the firm's decision process is driven by such customer-
level data. After the data have been assembled, the firm evaluates its channels (Are they profitable? Are they serving
the purposes for which they are designed?).With this knowledge in hand, the manager can specify a multichannel
strategy (which channels to employ, how to design them, how to allocate resources across channels) and a
marketing plan (pricing, assortment, service levels) for implementing the strategy.


Based on the challenges mentioned in previous section and the framework presented in this
section, organisations would want to follow an approach that covers the following -

1 Integration of customer data to create a Customer Data Integration (CDI) source, which
would provide a single customer view resulting in prompt analysis of customer data.

2 Understand customer behaviour based on customer data within CDI.

3 Once organisations get handle over customer behaviour, the next step would be to
determine customer's channel choice, there could be various variants like marketing
efforts, channel attributes, social influence, situational influence etc. which determines
his/her channel choice.

4 Once organisations get to know customer's choice of channel, it's important to evaluate the
profit contribution by all the channels used.

5 Based on valuation, organisations would want to allocate resources like marketing spend
and other resources to most valued channels, for e.g. if one particular channel valuation
indicates that that channel to be the most preferred and most profit contributing for
customer acquisition then allocate maximum resources to further increase the
acquisition.

6 Organisations should look to entail channel co-ordination strategies by developing
channel synergy based on aspects like customer segmentation and functions. For e.g.
some customers might use Internet to search about a product while another customer
might choose to use call centre services for product information. Organisations need to
ensure that profit-driving factors like product rice need to be consistent across channels.

This is a generic approach, which can be utilised across verticals, but the degree of overcoming the challenges could
be different for each vertical based on what all channels are applicable, customer segment, technology used and
other factors.


Benefits
With a Multi-Channel solution and framework is in place, organisations will realise the following benefits–

Unified view of customer across multiple channels
Identification and capture of opportunities for increasing value per customer
Streamlined cross-channel order fulfilments' through integration of all management systems involved
Increased choice for customers in the way they can interact
Ability to switch between the channels depending on customer preference and interaction type
360-degree view of customers and unlimited personalisation and targeted promotions through cross-
channel customer data integration and analysis.
Increase of efficiency through sharing of process, technology and information
Increased customer loyalty through cross-channel loyalty programs, where customers can earn points or
credit that can be accumulated and redeemed from any channel.
24 x 7 customer support by leveraging increased customer touch time across the multiple channels
Consistent brand, product, price and promotional information across all channels
Increased convenience and improved experience to customer
Increased organisational flexibility
Increased efficiency in exploiting customer data to identify customer needs

Bottomline
By now, we realise that a multi-channel framework helps achieve a unified view of the customer. This leads to better
effectiveness and convenience for organisations in terms of capturing data coming via various channels. What next?
The incoming information or data comprises of feedback, criticism and many individual views and thoughts – all
these demand attention and action post analysis.

In the next and last part of the whitepaper, we will look at Customer Response Management, which is a key
challenge in a multi-channel environment due to the diverse nature of channels. The stress will be on how channels
integrate and how the response received from the customer is managed and exchanged by various channels to
generate positive brand value and higher business returns.


customer centria

Customer
Response Management


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 organisation-
customer conversation byte - customer response and customer feedback! This section 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.


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 –

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

2 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.


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 –

1 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.

2 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 –

1 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.

2 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.

3 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.


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 –

1 The traffic that online offer brought to the business or website

2 The portion of that traffic that converted into customers or serious prospects

3 The amount of visibility the company received to build brand recognition

4 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.


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

@ Email AI-BasedParsing
Self-learning
Templates
95%
Auto
Multi-Channel Cross- Channel

Industry-leading accuracy
Easily integrated
Web Patented APR
Best in class. modular solution
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

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 –

1 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.

2 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.

3 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.

4 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.

5 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.

6 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.

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


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

9 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.

10 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 Program
Reports Management

Enhance
ROI

Manage
Order
List
Fulfillment

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.


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 this whitepaper 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.


CRM evolution, multi-channel integration and customer response management

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