social-analytics-for-crm

Social Analytics For

Customer Engagement

By Prasanna Rajanna June 2011

Abstract Social Analytics is the buzz word today. It does have the potential to keep the customer engagement team lean and efficient if the data gathered through Social channels are structured well to give actionable insights. While it is difficult to generalise the process and data structure, I have attempted here for two key customer engagement processes – a) Customer Experience and b) Lead Life Cycle. The concepts here can be tailored to suit specific industry processes and for their products / service offerings as well.

Social Analytics

Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................. 0 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 2 Process Evolution – The Three Rules................................................................................................. 3 Rule Number One ............................................................................................................................... 3 Rule Number Two ............................................................................................................................... 3 Rule Number Three ............................................................................................................................. 4 Customer Experience & Dashboard ................................................................................................... 4 Prioritization Engine ............................................................................................................................ 4 Process Monitoring Engine ................................................................................................................. 8 How can Social Analytics improve this process further? .................................................................. 11 Prospecting and Lead Life-Cycle ..................................................................................................... 12 Summary .............................................................................................................................................. 16

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Introduction With CRM now taking a formal “Social” shape, it‟s important to realize that connecting to Social media to gather information about the company / product / service offering is just the beginning.

More important is the fact that, the ocean of raw data needs to be churned well, filter out irrelevant information, structure the filtered data to present on the Manager‟s dashboard for a smarter and quicker decision. Traditional way of scheduling reports periodically would not work in a world where customer controls your products & pricing. Catching up with the market dynamics quickly is significantly highest priority to retain the winning edge. So, let us begin with the “End” in mind. What‟s the objective? The moment of truth is the quick response the customer gets, be it - query / feedback / interest expressed towards the product. Let us attempt to arrive at the concept first and then build algorithms around that. I have taken two key processes here and elaborated the concept.

A) Customer Experience B) Prospecting & Lead life Cycle

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Social Analytics

Process Evolution – The Three Rules Every customer expects a personal attention. Perception thus, is not an overnight phenomenon.

It‟s built brick-by-brick over many months & years of consistent experience he gets from the company. How do we arrive at a customer expressing – “Wow, what a quick response”! the very first time? The standard is thus set and this can only be at the least met or exceeded in all future interactions. Let‟s remember that no customer is ever forgiving and has ample choices to switch loyalty.

Fundamental rule – “Process always precedes the technology”. Technology can only be process enablers. Without process maturity, expecting miracles out of technology is like an Olympic athlete running a race with no tracks laid. Having understood these two – one from customer‟s perspective and another from the organization, let‟s start drawing the rules of the game. It‟s important to write these rules and proactively communicate to customer engagement teams. More important is to transact and operate within the framework of these rules consistently.

Rule Number One When we talk about equal treatment to customers, it means equal treatment to un-equal or dissimilar customers. We are in business. Every process laid has a cost implication since time is the KPI against which the standards are set. Every customer cannot expect the same treatment and still pay us the same amount. Differential treatment for differential payment; we need to segment our customers / prospects. Segment specific process has to be rule number one. As the segmented customer is taken through the process gates - alerts, notifications and escalations should be invoked along the process line to the team members to effectively close the loop. Entry and exit criteria need to be defined for each customer segment that will have at least one process owner and more than one process player (as needed) for effective completion. Customer feedback is a must to close the loop. Every process starts with the customer and closes with the customer.

Rule Number Two Do we have the right infrastructure (Team + Technology) to meet committed timelines? Let‟s take the team first. Like the way we segment the customer; we need to categorize the teams handling the respective customer segment. Define the pre-requisites for each team owner and team player.

Customer information, Product / Service information and process rules are the three information pockets that need to be constantly available to the team. Is there a process of regular assessment / evaluation of the team owner and team player for having adhered to the timelines? So, rule number two – Audit the process and the team regularly with timelines to close the gaps. Again here, customer feedback is mandatory to close the process gaps. This is where customer„s confidence gets re-emphasized. Technology here should meet the process objective. Hence the process and team should dictate the technology and not the other way round.

It‟s important that the outcome is measured. The KPI can be, customer queries closed by the Process owner for a particular segment on a defined timescale. As the process is audited the KPIs needs to reflect the result. With the advent of social channels, there will be changes in the workflow and business rules. This is what I call – “Readiness to open the Social gates”. Regular auditing helps to refine the workflow and business rules.

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Social Analytics Rule Number Three The fact that customer has accepted / agreed to your service implies that there is a value he sees in us compared to competitor. What is this value? Rule number three - Identify the unique value proposition we offer to customer in the respective category and propagate. It‟s important that each team owner and player is consciously aware of this value. Our entire service to customer is centered around this Value. So, the customer staying with us or switching loyalty depends on us meeting & exceeding this value each time and every time. The process metrics on the manager‟s dashboard should conspicuously present the result highlighting this value to enable him to make timely decisions.

How do we identify this value? Historical transactions will be a key indicator. Take the list of customers who have been giving us repeat business over and over again. Introspecting on each of them will provide that one or two USP/s. Similarly, take a list of prospects where we have lost the deal repeatedly. When compared with the former, this should clearly indicate that the value / USP recognized by repeat customers were not offered to the latter. This value needs to be selfbenchmarked; that can only improve with time. Many a times, this is completely overlooked and hence companies tend to grope in dark on the future course of direction.

Based on the above three rules, what can be the dashboard metrics on the Manager‟s table? Let me attempt by categorizing as below –

Customer Experience & Dashboard In-line with the three rules listed above, we will have to have two engines to drive the customer experience process – Prioritization Engine and Process Monitoring engine.

Prioritization Engine Let us categorize the customers into – Cat A, Cat B and Cat C (A being the Most valuable customer).

I have put sample illustrative figures for US Geography – Period: From DD/MM/YYYY To: DD/MM/YYYY Customer feedback (On a scale of 1 to 5): 1-Lowest; 5-Highest Customer No. of Total Rev Avg Rev per Team Geo Category Customers (Mn USD) customer Owner

USA

Total

A B C

10 20 30 60

100 75 25 200

10 3.75 0.83

Daniel Gary Lee

1 2 3 Will Stop business Will watch (Next 6 months) (Next 6 months) 20% 20% 30% 20% 20% 30% 20% 20% 30%

4 Next 1 yr Guaranteed 20% 20% 20%

Table 1

How do we structure this data to give actionable insights? One approach below -

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5 Will Continue 10% 10% 10%

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Mn (USD) Continued Revenue Guaranteed Revenue for 1 yr Revenue Unsure Revenue to be discontinued Total

Cat A

Cat B

Cat C

Total

10

7.5

2.5

20

20

15

5

40

50

37.5

12.5

100

20 100

15 75

5 25

40 200

Table 2

Overall Revenue Look-up:

Figure 1

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% Contribution of each category of customers over the Total Revenue

Figure 2

Category A contributes to 50% of overall revenue.

Category B contributes to 38% of overall revenue.

Category C contributes to 13% of overall revenue.

From the chart it‟s clear that – 1. Total value of unsure business is USD (Million) 100.

2. Total revenue to be discontinued is USD (Million) 40.

3. Total revenue guaranteed for next one year is USD (Million) 40 Hence the priority of fixing the process gaps will be Priority 1 - Fix the Category A customer‟s Unsure revenue business of USD (Million) 50.00 Priority 2 – Fix the Category B customer‟s Unsure revenue business of USD (Million) 37.50 Priority 3 – Fix the Category C customer‟s Unsure revenue business of USD (Million) 12.50 Priority 4 – Fix Category A customer‟s “Revenue to be discontinued” business of USD (Million) 20 Priority 5 – Fix Category B customer‟s “Revenue to be discontinued” business of USD (Million) 15 © All Rights Reserved

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Social Analytics Priority 6 - Fix Category C customer‟s “Revenue to be discontinued” business of USD (Million) 5 Priority 7 - Fix Category A customer‟s “Guaranteed for 1 year only” business of USD (Million) 20 Priority 8 - Fix Category B customer‟s “Guaranteed for 1 year only” business of USD (Million) 15 Priority 9 - Fix Category C customer‟s “Guaranteed for 1 year only” business of USD (Million) 5 This Prioritization engine when presented on the Manager‟s dashboard gives a direction to plan the actions going forward. While I have just taken sample figures to illustrate the concept, the same can be extrapolated to cover other geographies and / or other product / service offerings. These geography / product specific figures can in-turn be collated to give an overall picture to the executive board to fine tune the organization strategy. One of the better practices is to have a customer appraisal process once a quarter in-line with the employee‟s appraisal. This audit will keep the customer engagement team efficient and the team owner will have a clear sense of direction.

What is the contribution of Social media for Customer experience?

With the advent of social media networks, the customer touch points with the organization have increased. In addition to traditional emails / call centers, customer can log-in requests through community portals and self-service centers. In essence, the organization has to have processes to respond so much more swiftly to retain loyalty and consistently improve customer experience.

Category specific customer appraisal (Audit) process can be carried out on-line through social media. This gives the customer a collaborative experience with the organization to improve service quality for mutual benefit.

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Social Analytics Process Monitoring Engine Taking the same customer categorization as in the previous example, we will need to set up process gates and standard timelines to take the customer through the customer experience process. Let me illustrate this with an example. I have taken a Category A customer below who contacts the organization for a service request / query.

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Social Analytics Being Category A customer, he will be privileged to have the direct contact number of the customer engagement team owner for resolution. For illustration purpose, I have incorporated three gates (1, 2 and 3). When the customer comes to Gate 1 in this process, there have to be ALERTS invoked to SME, Secondary owner and RCA group. This will enable them to be ready to service the customer if required. For monitoring the SLA, threshold timelines need to be defined to pass from Gate 1 to Gate2 and Gate 2 to Gate 3. RCA group is important who will don the role of an external auditor. Their job is to continuously monitor all queries and consistently show better experience to customers by improved productivity and service quality. Itâ€&#x;s important to note that this is a collaborative effort of the team owner, SME, secondary owner and the RCA group to service the customer. Unlike traditional CRMs which are more transaction focused, a collaborative portal is needed to enable this customer experience process in a timely manner. The process needs to be closed with the customer receiving a notification of the corrective action taken to improve his experience with the organization going forward. This will also need to be published on community portals and social media network for the benefit of other customers and prospects.

Customer service request resolutions at the specific gates indicate important actionable insights to the team owner. It will give pointers to fix the process gaps and strengthen the respective teams as well. Sample illustration below –

Figure 3

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Figure 4

Figure 5

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Social Analytics How can Social Analytics improve this process further?

Customer feedback and queries from the Social media and community portals are a direct input to RCA group to address the issues and fix process / technology issues. Amongst the social media such as – Linked-in / Facebook, it will also give inputs to the organization on the most valuable channel during a particular period in the month to carry out sales campaigns for specific customer categories. Another dimension of the indication is channel adopted by each customer category to touch base with the organization. Here‟s the illustration.

Figure 6 This will give inputs to design campaigns / trade promotions for specific customer categories during that period of the month. We‟ll have to work backwards to set up the processes of obtaining the feedback in this structured manner. While the rules listed here are generic for actionable insights that can be applied to any industry, the proposed actions themselves are context specific.

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Social Analytics Prospecting and Lead Life-Cycle Probably the three rules will help in covering the ground horizontally and retaining customer loyalty. The second dimension is upward growth of the revenue. What I mean by upward growth is acquiring new customers and expanding into newer geographies. Here again Social media plays a very important role and I would say that the value offered by social media is significantly higher than traditional CRM. We‟ll have to essentially dive into Prospecting and Lead qualification processes. Traditional CRMs have lead assessment templates where a score is assigned to each parameter. When the overall score meets or exceeds a threshold value, the lead is taken forward in the qualification cycle. In the changed “Social” scenario, it may not suffice, since there are added dimensions of lead sources and customer expressing the feedback openly in the media. It needs more than the arithmetic approach. Let us first list the lead sources relevant to Social media – a) b) c) d) e)

Existing customer (References) Community portals / Company blogs / Facebook / Linked-in Direct campaigns (Loyalty points / Rewards) Trade promotions Cross sales / Up sales

Taking a cue from the earlier Prioritization engine, we will need to categorize the leads based on the source. They need to be handled differently by specific teams. The sales stages will depend upon the lead source / category. For example if the lead source is from an existing customer, then there is a good probability of closing it early as the prospect is aware of the product and expressed interest after tracking the product usage. If the lead source is direct campaigns, then the prospect needs to be accessed more number of times to progress towards the next sales stage.

Here is an example of lead life-cycle process where the source is an existing customer. I have assumed in the process below that the data has been extracted from Social channels and the leads assigned to the respective teams. Process begins once the process owner commences to act upon the lead assigned.

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Figure 7

This is drawn just to illustrate the concept. In reality the process will have more gates than in the flow above. Based on this process, how does the managerâ€&#x;s dashboard look like?

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Figure 8 As the number of leads increase at Gate 3, the Root-cause analysis group will need to investigate and fix the process / technology gaps. Corrective actions need to be communicated to Marketing, Sales and Service teams. Target is to reduce the number of leads going to Gate 3. This will help in two ways – keeping the respective sales team efficient and quicker response to prospects. This dashboard visibility can be extrapolated to include lead channels and the respective lead team owners who have closed the leads for a particular period. Illustration below –

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Social Analytics

Figure 9 This will give direction for designing future campaign channels and strengthen the respective backoffice teams as well.

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Social Analytics Summary Market analytics gathered from Social media should lead to actionable insights to the back-office processes. Productivity / Quality improvements thus gained need to be broadcasted back through Social channels and to individual customers as well. This effective closure of the loop will ensure personalized attention to customers. Customers need to be approached through the channels they prefer to communicate with. Any data inputs from social networks will need to be structured in a way it can give directions to the Manager and re-strategize as needed by the executive board as well. I have just taken two processes – Customer Experience and Lead Life-cycle and attempted to structure the data. We will need to do this for all other customer engagement processes as well and apply Social media concepts.

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