Cape Town, 13 Dec 2013
Connecting with customers is important. However, this has driven many companies to aggressively pursue marketing campaigns that mostly operate on 'one-way' communication. South African business intelligence leader, Effective Intelligence, explores the need for an omni-channel customer listening platform.
Consumers today move across diverse channels, and companies need to 'meet' customers on each of these channels. More importantly, they need to initiate an active customer listening process. Instead of facilitating this listening approach, companies are operating marketing automation and campaign management systems that are geared towards 'pushing' messages.
Effective Intelligence points out that these businesses need a radically different approach, one that starts with listening, instead of speaking. The existing segmented customer experiences need to be transformed into highly cohesive and customised messages for the customer. This traditional approach is too embedded in batch-based processes to adapt to the age of the customer, says Effective Intelligence CEO Julian Ardagh.
Many organisations already own a wealth of software applications, including data analytics, data systems, CRM, content management and many more. Yet, despite these being present, businesses don't have the tools to engage customers in real-time. The challenge is to get all these systems to work together and build the right engagement around it.
"The need for real-time listening and engagement is crucial," remarked Ardagh, as he explained the concept. "It's important to break down the social silo and aggregate social sentiment. Companies need to listen and react to customers across big data in real-time, because that is where, when and how they can offer real-time customer journeys."
An effective customer listing platform allows business to listen on multiple channels, expand the knowledge around the individual, discern the right course of action and improve the outcome.
The advantages of such a customer listening platform are numerous and profound. These include the ability to do the following in real-time:
* Listening simultaneously at individual levels, across diverse channels;
* Classifying the different 'subjects' that the business is listening for, eg, products, brand, competition;
* Collecting and connecting data from several sources;
* Conducting customer analysis, eg, evaluating a consumer's ability to purchase a product;
* Recognising relevant content;
* Responding across multiple channels; and
* Initiating important processes.
Ardagh summed up this modern business intelligence insight poetically: "Businesses that listen, see success." An omni-channel customer listening platform empowers businesses to effectively and rapidly engage new and existing customers by combining real-time actions, enterprise customer listening and direct response across multiple channels.
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