Financial Services (FS) and Telecommunications (Telco) are two industries that have a wide range of use cases which are ideally suited to the applications of a real-time customer decisioning system due to the large number of products, wide-ranging customer journeys covering sales, service, retention, etc. and an ever-growing number of customer-facing channels. Products and services within these two industries are also embedded into our day-to-day lives, providing immense opportunities for these industries to tailor omni-channel experiences for their customers.
A transformation to customer decisioning will involve both technical and business challenges. A previous article ('Resolving Difficulties Encountered When Implementing a Customer Decisioning Solution') covered the complexity of the data and technology elements - covering aspects such as data availability, data governance, artificial intelligence, etc. In this article we’ll focus on business challenges and how to create the ideal business environment for a successful implementation.
Key Dependency on People
A common point of failure relates to not having the correct people in place across the business. It starts at the top – who is championing the move to customer decisioning? Have you got executive level support? And not just business case support, but real leadership – senior colleagues who are going to hold other areas to account, promote benefits of the programme at an executive level and generally lead from the front when the going gets tough. Next, you need some quality thought leadership and subject matter expertise – people who understand the technology and how to get the best from it. By way of analogy, every Formula One team needs a great pit-stop crew to get the best performance from the car!
Create a Clear Strategic Vision
Business cases for technology investment are reviewed by the Finance team, and formal presentations are made to senior leaders to secure budget in next year’s operating plan. Job done, right? This, however, is just the beginning. With many organisations, an early challenge is not having a succinct, clear Strategic Vision which will be your North Star for the programme. This vision provides you with the ‘elevator pitch’ to explain key central ideas to colleagues not familiar with Customer Decisioning. A well-articulated Strategic Vision answers some of the key questions, including: what is the end goal? what broader business challenges will it address? what are the long-term benefits to customer and colleague experiences and the organisation’s commercial goals?
You need to be able to consistently sell your programme to colleagues across the business, as you will frequently need to explain your vision and ideas in those early months until you gain momentum and begin delivering. Having the guiding ‘North Star’ helps you not to lose sight of why you are doing it in the first place.
Moving From Strategic Thinking to Business Planning and Tactical Delivery
Now that you have set the direction of travel with the Strategic Vision, this needs to permeate into the wider organisation at all levels of business and operational planning. It is crucial that the Strategic Vision is reflected in your annual planning cycle along with a focus on delivering Minimum Lovable Products (MLPs) to deliver value quickly.
Identify and Deliver Minimum Lovable Products (MLPs)
A key objective of the implementation of customer decisioning should be a focus on delivering value quickly – that can be commercial value, benefit to the customer experience or improvements to known business issues. An obsessive focus on action and driving value will quickly create a reputation for delivery. An extension of that principle is to avoid ‘big bang’ IT releases. Large technical releases involve more testing and invariably more dependencies. So, focus on delivering small, frequent, incremental releases. Identify early MLP deliverables to excite the business – these could be proof-of-concepts, connect new channels to the decisioning brain (e.g. mobile app, mobile push, etc.), migrating monthly manual outbound campaigns to ‘always on’ automated communications, or improve key customer journeys (e.g. mortgage roll-off or new customer onboarding).
Establish Effective Internal Working Practices
Effective governance surrounding change programmes, efficient management of risks and issues, plus escalation and subsequent removal of blockers, are going to be key to driving progress on a brand’s journey to omni-channel customer decisioning. This links back to Strategic Vision and the dependency on people. Having senior leadership championing your programme, aligned with a clear vision should help ensure the programme does not get bogged down in day-to-day internal operational business challenges. The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said: “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place”. Problems need to be raised, reviewed, and resolved through effective communication and efficient decision making.
Change Management also needs to translate to how teams, people and roles are managed. The embedding of a centralised decisioning engine in an organisation’s landscape will likely impact roles and responsibilities within the existing teams. Acknowledging this impact, and proactively incorporating Operational Change Management thinking, will ensure ongoing success.
Champion a Corporate Growth Mindset
A key watch-out is around the general mindset within the business, specifically is there a real desire to change the approach to customer engagement? Avoid temptation to revert to old delivery approaches, whereby previous activities are delivered in the same way through the new platform. Are you learning from best practice in other industries? What data driven customer experiences would the Big Five tech companies (Amazon, Google, etc.) create if they entered your market? Ensure the programme has a growth mindset, a real interest in delivering best practice over the course of its life to create a lasting competitive advantage over your competitors.
A previous article ('Customer Decisioning: Lifting the Bonnet to Explore how a Decisioning Engine Works'), outlined the technical mechanics of customer decisioning and stepped through an example to really delve into what’s going on ‘under the bonnet’ of the technology. While a technical understanding is key, establishing the correct business environment and ways of working is equally important for customer decisioning to drive commercial benefit and to step-change the customer experience.
Our contribution to customer-centric excellence
In a previous article ('Customer Decisioning: Why it’s Crucial to an Unbound Experience'), we highlighted the significance of customer decisioning in enhancing the customer experience. By embracing a 'segment of one' approach and data-driven insights, we empower precise, timely, and personal customer interactions that build meaningful moments and experiences. With our help, businesses can deliver exceptional customer engagement in this competitive landscape, fostering enduring relationships.
Want to read more? If you missed our last Decisioning Congress in October, you can access all the valuable content on-demand from across the two days. Explore the five stages of the Decisioning Life Cycle and gain actionable insights to become a world-class decisioning business.
If you’re considering a complete transformation of your customer experience, get in touch with Merkle today to drive real, valuable results.