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Increasing Profitability through Intelligent Interactions: Innovative Marketing Strategies in the Communications Industry An Epiphany Business White Paper

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Increasing Profitability through Intelligent Interactions:Innovative Marketing Strategies in the Communications Industry

An Epiphany Business White Paper

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It is a turbulent time for the communications

industry, but also a time of great transition. While

some companies in the sector are merely

struggling to survive, others are rethinking theirbusiness strategies and redesigning their

marketing practices to build more profitable,

enduring relationships with their best customers.

The leading edge companies are seeking new

ways to set themselves apart from their less-savvy

competitors and thrive in the coming years.

Successful communications marketers are now

moving beyond the traditional practice of

outbound marketing and are taking the steps

necessary to drive new revenue through cross-

selling and up-selling. They are also addressing

the increasing challenge of customer churn,

which represents a major threat to all companies

in the industry. These strategic players have

stepped off the endless treadmill of customer

attrition and acquisition. Rather than devoting

all their resources to customer acquisition

programs, they are investing in programs that

increase the loyalty and profitability of their

existing customers. At the same time, they are

leveraging their existing call center and web-

based infrastructures to manage customer-

driven interactions with increasing skill and

precision. All of these strategic investments are

paying off in both increased profits and

customer satisfaction.

As the diminishing returns associated with

outbound, acquisition-focused marketing initiatives

become even more apparent, leading companies

are placing much more emphasis on inbound

marketing and intelligent customer interactions as

the means for building powerful customer

relationships that boost profitable growth.

COMMUNICATIONS IN TRANSITION

Business headlines today tend to emphasize the

current troubles faced by communicationscompanies in transition. The challenge for

communications firms lies in building the

foundation for enduring growth and profitability,

while also focusing on the bottom line. With this

in mind, many of these companies are

increasingly concentrating on the value of

individual customers. As marketers in the

communications industry are beginning to

realize, tools that facilitate effective cross-

selling, up-selling, and customer retention are

essential to meeting this objective.

In North America, diversified operators are now

cross-selling and up-selling local service, long-

distance, wireless, and data products to their

existing customers. Wireless operators areintensely focused on increasing their average

revenue per user (ARPU) by up-selling plans

that include more minutes, cross-selling wireless

data services, and extending existing contracts.

And in Europe, operators are focused on serving

pre-paid customers more effectively, migrating

high-value pre-paid customers to post-paid

plans, and finding opportunities to cross-sell

new and innovative wireless data services.

While concentrating their efforts on boosting

existing customer value, many communications

companies throughout the world-both wireless

and wireline operators-are also focused on

reducing customer churn. Annual churn rates in

consumer wireline and wireless segments have

reached as high as 40% and 50%, respectively,

and these high customer churn rates can lead to

lost profits, high customer acquisition costs, and

lower profit per customer. Based on customer

acquisition expenditures alone, replacing lost

customers costs the communications industry

billions of dollars annually.

For wireline operators, competitors are coming

from all angles to replace both primary voice and

secondary Internet access lines. Cable (MSO)operators are heavily promoting their broadband

Internet and voice-over-IP services in an effort to

be the consumer's single source for

communications and cable television services.

That translates into households potentially

relinquishing their traditional telephone lines in

exchange for high-speed cable access.

Moreover, wireless operators are having

increasing success as the primary

communications provider to youth markets, the

engine of growth for any communications

business. Today, 5% of US households use awireless phone exclusively, and that percentage

continues to increase, further eroding traditional

wireline businesses. Yet, wireless operators

themselves face extremely strong competition

to retain customers, from within the wireless

market itself.

Given the relentless change and competition in

the marketplace, savvy marketers have

recognized that their strategic opportunity lies

in creating something that will endure: solid,

Increasing Profitability through Intelligent Interactions: Innovative Marketing Strategies in the Communications Industry

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profitable and loyal customer relationships. But

to win in the high-stakes communications game,

marketers must do things that set them apart

from the competition.

INBOUND MARKETING DRIVES

INTELLIGENT INTERACTIONS

Marketing in the communications sector has

traditionally been an outbound effort using

direct mail, telemarketing, and e-mail. However,

outbound market ing has become an

increasingly difficult and expensive endeavor in

recent years. Government regulations, consumer

backlash, and dwindling response rates have all

diminished the role of outbound campaigns

within the overall marketing mix.

The relative decline in outbound marketing is

part of a fundamental marketing transformation

that is taking place in the communications

industry. This shift represents an ascendance of

inbound marketing, which revolves around

"inbound" customer touchpoints such as the

web and the call center. Considering that

communications companies have made

tremendous investments in these forms of

infrastructure over the years, this shift

represents a vast opportunity to leverage and

maximize the value of existing assets. Strategic

marketers are recognizing that incrementalinvestments in customer interaction capabilities

can help them extend the power of their existing

infrastructures to manage customers in

powerful and profitable new ways.

For consumer-oriented companies, the inbound

channel is a golden opportunity to build and

capitalize on the customer relationship. Unlike

outbound interruptions, inbound interactions

represent a time when companies have the

customer's time and attention, and are more

likely to receive permission to cross-sell a

product or deliver a marketing message.

The real-time nature of the inbound interaction

also creates opportunities. It is a chance to

address the customer on a personal basis,

presenting relevant messages and offers that

reflect the most up-to-date needs, preferences

and priorities of that customer. For example,

imagine a wireless consumer that has had a

significant number of dropped calls during a 24-

hour period. By leveraging the real-time nature

of the interaction, the company can offer this

customer a retention offer to show how much

they value the customer, as opposed to an

inappropriate up-sell or cross-sell offer.

Sophisticated marketers are deploying inbound

marketing strategies to generate offers that are

based on customer profiles, transaction histories

and other forms of real-time information. In the

process, they generate the right offer for the right

customer at the right time. The relevance of this

personalized customer care helps to ensure that

these businesses realize optimal results.

UNMET POTENTIAL

Yet, for all the opportunities to complement

outbound marketing and elevate customer

value, most inbound marketing solutions today

fall far short of their potential. Many

communications companies continue to rely on

inefficient and ineffective approaches to

managing inbound customer interactions. For

instance, it is still common to find inbound

marketing represented by an "offers of the

week" sheet—a static list of marketing offers

delivered by customer service agents who must

rely on training and experience to decide, caller

by caller, which offers to make. In addition,

automated, rules-based customer interaction

systems are delivering disappointing results as

well. Rules simply cannot account for thethousands of customer scenarios likely to be

encountered, and result in inflexible, time

consuming, error prone systems and ineffective

marketing programs. Finally, some companies

have started using analytics to decide which

marketing offer or message to present.

However, most analytic solutions rely on off-line

batch or periodic data feeds and do not take the

real-time or near-term context of the customer

interaction into account.

Listed below are a few of the limitations of rules-

based and off-line approaches to inbound marketing:

• Rules are Hard to Get Right. Rules-based sys-

tems place the burden on marketers to

account for and manage every customer inter-

action situation that might arise. It is virtually

impossible, however, to create and maintain a

full set of rules that will take into account

every permutation of customer segment, cam-

paign, offer, and interaction scenario.

• Rules are Difficult to Maintain. Inbound mar-

keting solutions based on a rules-based

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methodology ultimately require more time

and attention to build and maintain. As the

number of rules grows, it becomes increas-

ingly important to be able to test in advancethe impact of adding new rules.

• Rules are Hard to Measure. Since rules lack

analytics, they provide no insight about the

customer behaviors and attributes that drive

certain actions, such as why customers react

favorably to certain messages more frequently

than others. Thus, it is often difficult to know

when (or how) the rules should be changed to

reflect changing market conditions.

• Off-Line Prediction is "Too Late". Another

non-optimal approach leverages off-line ana-

lytics to predict which messages will be best

suited for each customer during the next

interaction. This batch analysis is less effec-

tive than a true real-time approach since it

takes place prior to the interaction and can-

not take information about the interaction

itself into account. In addition, batch systems

require manual analysis of results and period-

ic re-deployment of new models, both of

which require more resources and lead to

lost opportunities.

• Off-line Models Require Historical Data.

Off-line models usually require extensive his-

torical data before they can be used for

predictions, making it difficult to draw con-

clusions about offer success for a significantperiod of time. The result is fairly static

inbound marketing programs that are unable

to quickly adjust to changing market condi-

tions, new offers, or new customers.

BEST PRACTICES IN INBOUND MARKETING

Successful marketers in the communications

industry are focused on building relationships

with their best customers. They look for

products for their customers as opposed to

customers for their products. And they know

that it is five to seven times more expensive toacquire a new customer than it is to cultivate an

existing one.

These marketers have also become increasingly

strategic about how they manage inbound,

customer-driven interactions. Whereas many

companies might treat inbound interactions—

particularly complaints or threats of service

termination—as a nuisance, these marketers see

them as a prime opportunity to defend, develop

or deepen a relationship.

Some of the key strategies and practices that

are driving their success include:

Driving Intelligent Interactions.Customers today have unique needs,

preferences and priorities. Depending on a

customer's particular circumstances, they are

likely to respond to offers and messages in

different ways. Because of this, every customer

interaction is an opportunity to strengthen the

relationship. Rather than risk losing a customer

or an opportunity by presenting impersonal

messages and offers, leading companies are

focused on personalizing each interaction based

on real-time customer information and

intelligence.

These customer-focused enterprises rely on

real-time, self-learning analytics to discover the

patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed—

and then take immediate action based on those

insights. World-class analytical tools now enable

them to determine which campaigns, offers and

messages have the highest statistical chance of

success with a particular customer, at the

moment of contact. These firms are able to

leverage real-time, behavioral and historical

information to determine how best to manage

each individual customer interaction.

Real-time, predictive analytics are the best way todecide the messages that are most appropriate for

the customer. These analytics drive personalized

recommendations, offers and messages based on

predictive models running in the background. They

also allow innovative companies to experiment and

test new ideas on a subset of their customers, and

then rapidly leverage new insights across the rest

of their customer base.

Accounting for Business Objectives

In order for an inbound marketing interaction is

to be optimal, it must not only address the

particular needs and concerns of the customerbut also meet the business goals of the

organization. In other words, companies must

ensure that they are making offers that

are carefully aligned with their immediate

and longer-term objectives, whether those

objectives revolve around growth, profitability

or customer retention.

To meet these objectives, so phist icated

marketers are now adopting offer arbitration for

inbound interactions. This approach ensures

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that the optimal message is chosen from an

array of possible messages. For instance, a

communications company with a high churn

rate may decide to prioritize retention offersabove all other presentations. Alternatively,

within a cross-sell campaign, bundles may be

given highest priority, with the individual bundle

offers sorted by the expected value of an

accepted offer.

In almost all situations, different messages with

different purposes that target the same people

will compete for a critical resource: the

customer's attention. When these messages

compete, offer arbitration can weigh the value

of each offer along with the customer's

likelihood of acceptance, ensuring that the final

message balances the customer's need for

relevant offers with the company's objective to

increase profitability.

Building Real-Time Customer Profiles

Today's successful marketers build their programs

around individual customer profiles, focusing

their attention on the customers that retain the

highest value. This practice is based on the

fundamental realization that marketing to the

average customer will achieve no more than the

average customer's value. Yet, today it is still

common in the communications industry to find

campaigns based on simplistic, one-size-fits-allapproaches. Smart marketers have taken the first

step towards improved results by using individual

customer data to select appropriate offers.

To grow marketing revenues beyond average,

best practice companies rely on individual

customer profile data and analytics to improve

performance and drive true customer

intelligence. Marketers have achieved significant

gains using customer profile data such as

tenure, product usage, ARPU, billing data, credit

status, contextual data and demographic data.

The more sophisticated this customerintelligence-and the more actively it is

leveraged-the more effectively companies can

manage and strengthen relationships. In fact,

marketers that convert to real-time, individual

customer profiles often experience double-digit

gains in offer acceptances, as compared to

untargeted, average customer approaches.

However, for customer profiles to be effective, it

is critical that the profiles be up-to-date and

accessible in real time. It is estimated that this

real-time context can provided 40-50% of the

predictive power of analytic models. Through a

sub-second assessment of the context of the

current customer interaction (e.g., servicerequest, billing question, complaint, service

termination, etc.), and other very recent

interactions (e.g., transactions, calls, website

visits, etc.), these systems can generate relevant,

personalized recommendations with much

higher precision than non-real-time systems.

Enabling and Encouraging Collaboration

Today's leading communications companies

are strengthening the connections between

marketing and customer interaction channels, as

well as between departments and divisions. While

in the past many marketing departments and

customer service organizations have worked in

isolation, today's consumer oriented companies

are finding that success lies in ensuring cross-

organization alignment of all marketing and

service objectives, actions and processes.

To maximize the value of customer relationships,

it is critical that communications companies

speak with a single voice to their customers and

have access to all previous interactions. For

example, the wireless product group should

have access to and leverage information about

customers using high-speed data services. By

collaborating across business units anddepartments, communications companies are

able to share information more effectively and

ensure customers are managed in a consistent

fashion. Collaboration also avoids depleting

customer attention by coordinating and

proactively limiting the number of customer

contacts made.

Successful companies have now bridged the

gap between marketing and customer care, so

that the organization that designs campaigns

works closely with the organization that

manages customer interactions. By closingthis gap, companies ensure greater success

in marketing campaigns, more accurate

measurement of campaign results, and more

rapid adaptation to changes in the marketplace.

In addition, close collaboration between these

groups ensures higher customer satisfaction.

Measuring and Refining for Results

It is vital to measure and refine one's marketing

campaigns to match market trends and to

improve business performance. Only in this way

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can companies set and meet marketing

objectives of the highest order. The ability to

learn continually from the market and then act

on the intelligence that has been gathered is ahallmark of a dynamic, agile, modern enterprise.

Equally important, these highly measurable

approaches have made it possible for front-line

marketers to demonstrate improved results to

management and thereby secure ongoing

support for their programs.

Compared to the old "spray and pray" approach,

today's closed-loop systems leverage analysis of

observed customer data generated through

actual campaigns to determine the most

effective tactic for achieving the desired result.

Campaigns can be designed, tested against

control groups, and then rolled out more

broadly. In this way, campaigns start small, and

then are promoted to the broader customer

base once refined and proven effective. With

this feedback loop in place, campaigns become

better targeted, more frequently updated and

ultimately more effective.

Closed loop approaches typically spark a move

towards more flexible and focused marketing. For

example, a diversified operator may want to cross-

sell the same DSL Internet package using multiple

messages, each targeted at a particular customer

segment (e.g., SOHO businesses, high-incomehouseholds, etc). Alternatively, a wireless operator

might decide to promote each of its various

wireless data applications (e.g., SMS, news, sports,

weather, ring tones, e-mail, games) using

messages specific to the customer segments it is

trying to reach. By measuring and tracking the

results of these personalized approaches,

companies are able to continuously sharpen their

segmentation and message targeting.

BOTTOM-LINE BENEFITS

As leading consumer-oriented companies in thecommunications sector have learned and

demonstrated, strategic approaches to inbound

marketing and customer interaction

management can significantly boost individual

customer value, revenues and profitability.

Drawing on the real-world experiences of several

top communications companies, it is clear these

firms have generated substantial ROI from both

retention and cross-sell programs. Listed here are

 just a few of those real-world scenarios:

Retention ROI Scenario

Customer retention has become a high priority

in the communications industry in recent years.

As markets have matured, churn has becomemore pervasive, and customer growth has

slowed. Because of these forces, significant

benefits are being generated by focusing on

retaining existing customers.

Projecting the hard dollar savings yielded by

a best practice retention program requires

specific information. Here are a few

simple assumptions:

• Number of customers. Assume this operator

has a total of 3 million subscribers.

• Expected decrease in churn as a result of

implementing a successful program. Even

incremental improvements in churn can have

dramatic economic impacts. Conservatively

assume a 0.1% reduction in churn rates.

• Cost to acquire a new customer. A general

rule of thumb is $250-$300 for the commu-

nications industry.

• Cost to retain an existing customer. A gener-

al rule of thumb is that it costs 5 times as

much to acquire a new customer than to

keep an existing customer. Assume $50 to

retain an existing customer.

Using a conservative 0.1% reduction in churn, asuccessful program would yield $600,000 in

saved customer acquisition costs. Note that this

calculation includes only the cost of acquiring a

new customer, and does not include the fact

that loyal customers have significantly higher

revenue and profitability than new customers.

SAMPLE CALCULATION

Total Customers 3M

% Incremental Churn Reduction 0.1%

Retained Customers 3,000

Incremental Cost Savings Per Customer

(Acquisition cost $250 less cost of retention $50) $200Saved Acquisition Costs $600,000

Cross-Sell / Up-Sell Benefit Scenario

Still another powerful aspect of an inbound

marketing program is the capacity to generate

increased revenue and profit through cross-

selling or up-selling efforts to an existing

customer base. Beyond simply addressing a

service issue or a customer request, inbound

marketing capabilities enable a company to

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present a relevant offer that matches an

individual customer's needs and interests.

Through this process, customer interactionsbecome increasingly valuable and important

opportunities that can contribute mightily to

customer loyalty, profitability, and overall growth.

Projecting the incremental gross profit yielded by

an inbound cross-sell / up-sell program requires

specific information. Here are a few assumptions:

• Annual inbound customer interactions. In the

communications industry, the vast majority of

inbound contacts occur in the call center. For

this scenario, assume there are 9 million

inbound call center interactions per year.

• Percentage of interactions eligible for cross-

sell. Not all inbound interactions will be eligible

for a marketing offer because customers

should not be cross-sold during certain situa-

tions (e.g., dispute resolution, cancellation).

Assume that 25% of interactions are eligible for

cross-selling or up-selling.

• Expected offer acceptance rates. Offer accept-

ance rates can vary widely and rely heavily on

the marketer's ability to create compelling

campaigns and offers. Assume an extremely

conservative 1% higher offer acceptance rate

(this can be the improvement over and above

an existing cross-sell program or the rate ofbrand new cross-sell program).

• Expected incremental value generated from

a cross-sell offer. Assume that, when accept-

ed, the cross-sell offer being promoted

generates $50 in immediate incremental rev-

enue and has a 60% gross profit margin.

Below is a sample calculation showing the first

year ROI impacts of cross-selling in the call

center. Each 1% increase in offer acceptance

rates yields $675,000 of annual incremental

gross profit.

SAMPLE CALCULATION Contact Center

Annual Inbound Interactions 9M

% Interactions Eligible for Cross-Sell 25%

# Interactions Eligible for Cross-Sell 2.25M

Increase in Offer Acceptance Rate 1%

Incremental Offers Accepted 22,500

Expected Revenue Per Offer $50

Incremental Revenue $1,125,000

Gross Profit Margin 60%

Incremental Gross Profit $675,000

Bundling Penetration Benefit

Successful cross-selling of bundles can provide

even greater lift to customer value-by

simultaneously reducing churn, generating newrevenue, and increasing loyalty. Customers who

purchase bundles spend between 7 percent and

15 percent more than other customers. This

benefit is additive to the initial gain from cross-

selling a bundled offer.

A successful marketing program in the

communications industry would likely select the

best bundled offers and prioritize them over

other offers, driving bundling strategies to the

front of inbound marketing efforts. As a result,

this program could increase bundling penetration

and improve individual customer spend.

Projecting the incremental gross profit yielded

by a bundling program requires specific

information. Here are a few assumptions:

• Number of customers. Assume this operator

has a total of 3 million subscribers.

• % incremental increase in bundle penetration.

Assume a 0.5% increase in bundle penetration.

• Expected incremental value generated from

a bundle offer. Assume that bundles drive

$50 of annual incremental revenue and have

a 60% gross profit margin.

SAMPLE CALCULATION

Customers 3M

% Incremental Increase in Bundle Penetration 0.5%

Incremental Bundle Penetration 15,000

Annual Incremental Revenue Per

Customer Owning a Bundle $50

Annual Incremental Revenue $750,000

Gross Profit Margin 60%

Incremental Gross Profit $450,000

As the above scenarios suggest, the payoffs

associated with embracing a dynamic,intelligent approach to inbound marketing are

demonstrably real. Through customer retention,

cross-selling and bundling programs, inbound

marketing provides an opportunity to maximize

the value of each customer relationship while

leveraging existing investments in call center

and web infrastructure.

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EPIPHANY'S INTERACTION ADVISOR FOR

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Recognizing the challenges and opportunities thatcompanies in the communications industry now

face, Epiphany has developed a powerful inbound

marketing solution for today's leading enterprises.

Epiphany Interaction Advisor for Communications

is a multi-channel inbound marketing application

built specifically for the communications industry.

It utilizes customer data from across the entire

enterprise to deliver intelligent interactions

to all touchpoints in real time.

As part of the Epiphany Advisor family of

solutions, Interaction Advisor can be easily

integrated with existing applications to drive

immediate revenue out of each customer

interaction. Controlled by a marketing

professional through an intuitive Web-based

inter face , the app l icat ion prov ides a

framework for creating, executing, modifying,

a n d m o n i t o r i n g i n b o u n d m a r k e t i n g

campaigns. The communications solution

includes a number of industry best practices,

including data models, business processes,

and marketing templates.

With top customers globally, Epiphany

Interaction Advisor for Communications is an

established leader and delivers proven businessresults. Our customers include:

• 2 of 4 Largest Regional Bell Operating

Companies (RBOCs) in North America

• 2 of Top 3 European Telecom Companies

• 3 of the Top 7 Wireless providers worldwide

INTERACTION ADVISOR DELIVERS KEY

BUSINESS BENEFITS FOR COMMUNICATIONS

COMPANIES.

Retain Your Most Valuable Customers

Epiphany Interaction Advisor recommends theoptimal retention offer for each customer,

matching the value of the offer to the value the

customer brings to the enterprise. Because it

works in real time, the solution can be used as

part of an ongoing loyalty campaign or to

recommend an immediate action to retain a

customer who demonstrates an intention to

defect. As a result, companies that use

Epiphany Interaction Advisor are improving

their customer retention by 50 percent

or more.

Increase Revenue per Customer through

Cross-Sell

Epiphany Interaction Advisor increases cross-

sell revenue from each customer by lookingacross all possible offers and selecting the one

that will drive the highest expected value for

that individual. It uses a combination of

historical, personal, and contextual data to

create a real-time customer profile, and then

applies a unique blend of real-time analytics and

business rules to deliver the highest-impact

offers at the moment of interaction. Using this

solution, Epiphany customers are doubling and

tripling their offer acceptance rates and their

cross-sell revenue.

Increase Penetration of Product and Service

Bundles

Interaction Advisor increases carrier revenue by

allowing operators to use offer arbitration to

prioritize bundled offers over other programs,

and to drive bundles to the forefront of the

inbound marketing strategy. This ultimately

results in both increased revenue and enhanced

customer loyalty.

Ensure Consistent Multi-Channel Customer

Interactions

Epiphany Interaction Advisor was specifically

designed to ensure intelligent interactions

across any number of marketing channels.Using out-of-the-box interfaces, companies can

easily plug Interaction Advisor into their call

center, web site, point of sale, or any other

inbound channel. The Real-Time Decisioning

Service seamlessly manages messages across all

these channels using its unique combination of

dynamic business rules and real-time, self-

learning analytics. Coordinating with outbound

campaigns created in Epiphany Marketing is

both easy and intuitive through a web-based

user interface. Contact preferences can also be

created and enforced across all channels to

ensure the consistent treatment of customers.

Quickly Respond to Changing Market Conditions

Epiphany Interaction Advisor's easy to use web-

based interface allows you to create and deploy

changes in days, not months. Real-time reporting

provides an immediate view into the success of

campaigns and offers as they are rolled out,

which allows immediate adjustments to be made

whenever necessary. The real-time self-learning

analytics begin getting smarter immediately

about which customers respond to which offers—

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9Increasing Profitability through Intelligent Interactions: Innovative Marketing Strategies in the Communications Industry

SUCCESS STORY: BELL CANADA AND BELL MOBILITY

Bell Canada is Canada's leading communications company, providing service to resi-dential and business customers through wired and wireless voice and datacommunications, high speed and wireless Internet access, direct-to-home satellite, IP-broadband services, e-business solutions, and local and long distance phone services.Bell Mobility, a division of Bell Canada, is the country's largest wireless service provider.

The Interaction Advisor project introduced at Bell Mobility was initiated in an effort totransform its inbound call center into a revenue-generating and customer-centricoperation. In late 2000, Bell Mobility's marketing and customer service departmentscame together in an effort to change the contact centers from a traditional cost-cen-

ter service organization into a more modern, revenue-generating sales and serviceorganization. Bell Mobility sought a seasoned CRM leader that would become a long-term business partner, not simply a vendor. The company required a highly targetedreal-time marketing solution that could:

• Increase employee effectiveness• Raise customer satisfaction and loyalty• Decrease customer churn• Generate revenue through cross-sell and up-sell• Integrate easily with existing systems• Learn automatically in real time• Deploy quickly and easily

In June 2001, Bell Mobility implemented Interaction Advisor in its home-grown con-tact center application for 550 agents. Campaigns were categorized betweenpre-paid and post-paid wireless customers and included churn, cross-sell/up-sell andrevenue stimulation campaigns. Interaction Advisor now arbitrates between 70 differ-ent offers for each eligible customer interaction.

The project has been a smashing success. After implementing Interaction Advisor, BellMobility has been able to:

• Increase campaign velocity by 75%• Boost agent sales per hour by up to 18%• Increase sales revenues from the inbound channel by 16%

• Immediately adjust efforts through real-time campaign monitoring• Improve agent performance through real-time agent monitoring

With the success of Interaction Advisor at Bell Mobility, Bell Canada recently electedto expand its use of the product to an additional 2,300 Bell Canada contact centeragents. Bell Canada agents deliver offers across wireless, long distance, local service,Internet and satellite TV. Interaction Advisor arbitrates between 80 different offers foreach eligible customer interaction.

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Business

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Paper

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no historical data is required. This allows you to

respond to changing market conditions faster

than ever before, decreasing marketing cycle

times, and becoming significantly more proactivein your marketing approach.

Augment Existing Systems to Deliver Rapid

Time to Value

Interaction Advisor plugs into existing IT

environments through a library of standards-

based interfaces. It leverages investments in

data warehouses and databases for customer

profile information and integrates easily to

front-end systems that expose inbound

marketing offers. Rather than ripping out and

replacing existing systems, Interaction Advisor

extracts and extends their value. Because it is

fully compatible with other systems, Epiphany

Interaction Advisor can be implemented in as

little as six weeks. As a result, businesses can

get up and running quickly, leading to payback

on investment in six months or less.

SEPARATING THE BEST FROM THE REST

The communications industry is now in the

midst of a painful consolidation, which results in

a confusing, fragmented and frustrating

experience for most customers. In order to

succeed in this environment, companies must

effectively compete for customer attention andretention through quality service and intelligent

customer interactions.

Leading consumer-oriented communications

companies—the ones that will survive and thrive

in the years to come—recognize that they must

strategically invest in deep, enduring and

profitable customer relationships. To accomplish

this, these companies are constantly refining

their customer strategies and customer-facing

business processes. They seek to leverage

inbound channels to sell more services to their

existing customers as opposed to constantly

chasing new ones.

However, what these companies also realize is

that they must leverage their existing

infrastructures more effectively if they are to

meet these objectives. Successful companies are

embracing technology that enables them to

manage customers on a more powerful and

personal level, but that does not require them to

rip out and replace their existing systems. This

ultimately increases ROI for all customer-related

investments, even legacy operational systems

that have to date delivered disappointing returns.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that

these leading companies are only widening the

gap between themselves and their less-savvy

competition. They are exploring new ways to

refine their marketing approaches, work

collaboratively with all of their enterprise-wide

departments and enhance the richness of each

and every customer interaction. They are

already pushing their inbound initiatives to new

lengths in an attempt to uncover the next best

practices that will provide competitive

differentiation. At some point, the distance

between the best and the rest will become

impossible to recover.

Forward-thinking companies in the communi-

cations industry have come to realize that the

time to invest in winning strategies-and best

practices-is now. The opportunity is clear and it

is being seized by an emerging set of market

leaders. The telecom industry may be in

transition, but the best are merely treating this

as an opportunity to redefine their relationships

with their customers and drive increased

customer loyalty, profit and enduring growth to

the front lines of their businesses.

Increasing Profitability through Intelligent Interactions: Innovative Marketing Strategies in the Communications Industry

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About Epiphany

Epiphany (NASDAQ: EPNY) provides CRM software solutions

that increase profitability at the largest consumer-oriented

companies by making every customer interaction intelligent.With over 475 customers in financial services, insurance, retail,

communications, and travel & leisure—including nearly 35

percent of the Fortune 100—Epiphany powers deep customer

insights and optimizes each relationship from both a revenue

generation and customer retention viewpoint.

With a suite of blended marketing, sales and service solutions,

Epiphany enables global organizations to align touchpoints,

processes and technologies around the most valuable enterprise

asset—the customer. Built on the industry's most advanced,

service-oriented architecture, Epiphany solutions address

problems that span business silos, departmental functions and

geographic locations, and result in rapid, measurable ROI. With

worldwide headquarters in San Mateo, CA, Epiphany serves

customers in more than 40 countries worldwide.

Contact

475 Concar Drive

San Mateo, CA 94402

USAp 650.578.7200

f 650.356.3810

epiphany.com

Global Offices

Americas:

+1.877.764.4163

Asia/Pac:

+61.2.9492.1200

Europe:

+44.118.929.7700

Japan:

Epiphany Solutions,

Ltd. +81.3.5733.1720

© 2003-04 Epiphany, Inc. All rights reserved. EPIPHANY, the Epiphany logo, and E.6 are trademark of Epiphany,Inc., registered in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other company names, product names, and trade-

marks are the property of their respective owners.

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