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Big Data and traditional DWH comparison infographics
Drawing I made to support explanation about the change in existing BI paradigm with introduction of Big Data
The place to share my thoughts about leadership, marketing, sales and technology
Drawing I made to support explanation about the change in existing BI paradigm with introduction of Big Data
Big Data is a big is a Big buzzword. Although it brings huge opportunities, the "hype talks" might miss lead you to wrong decision that Big Data is cure for all. The truth is pretty simple – Big Data can give those answers that are hidden within the analyzed data set.
Spring 2010, at a small Croatian town there is an unusual meeting going on in a factory that we will call PPP. The meeting room at the first floor of the administrative building, just next to the gray production halls, hosted a group of about 10 different people. Individuals in the room take part of a fiery debate about the presentation that's been projected on the wall. The discussion of a group of people in white coats, most probably production and development engineers, is obviously driven by the two most active members, often arguing with conflicting views among each other. There is a few people dressed in suites. One would guess that those are consultants and the company's management team. Part of that group is quiet; they are just listening, and nodding from time to time to show their mental presence in the debate. Two persons from the group in suites ask a lot of questions. Some other participants are very active as well. They draw on the board and answer the questions with lively gestures. Those are mostly members of the academic community that take part of one of the EU "cross-border cooperation" projects, which is actually the reason of this colorful meeting.
Let's add sensors
In order to improve the efficiency of the production process and product quality, PPP initiated enrichment of certain phases of production by additional sensors, PLC and SCADA elements. By increasing the number of sensors from 12 to 35 per production machine, PPP started one of numerous initiatives around the world that contribute to the enormous global growth of machine generated data, the one we like to call Big Data. At one point, a temperamental professor with a French beard took stage. He passionately explains to the group recent results gathered from mining of the newly established data sets based on the increased number of sensors. No matter how colorful graphs were clear and despite the insight that was much above the previous findings, it was hard not to recognize the indifference on the faces of other participants in the meeting. Something is missing!
Data model or a Swiss cheese?
The whole initiative should provide, if not revolutionary, then at least usable insights. "We need to close the circle!". All of a sudden, eyes of the participants were turned on the consultant who had been silent so far. "We need to close the information circle. You have all the parameters of the machine, but you really should start from the goals. You have to ensure traceability and link quality of the products with different stages of the production process and their parameters. Otherwise the new parameters won't have much to say." It is difficult to add IT tags to the hot metal castings that are being produced by the machines at PPP, so the data that was supposed to link the quality achieved and the level of waste with the 35 newly established parameters was simply missing.
Big Data: new methods, old constrains
Concluding superficially, Big Data might be perceived as a cure for everything: "now that we have so much information available, it is enough to develop mathematical algorithms and we will find all the answers." But the truth is exactly the opposite. Today we have plenty of mathematical algorithms – from those that recognize your face, the tone of your voice or your fingerprint to those which understand the context of human speech, but the ways in which we traditionally collect data (processes) are not aligned with the technological capabilities of finding data patterns and filtering it through massive parallel processing (technology). More specifically, Big Data technologies will surely find patterns through a large amount of data, but those will not always propose answers to your problem or give you new relevant insights. In the same way, the data mining in PPP provided insight into the machine behavior such as stability patterns of certain parameters during the production cycles, including some insightful deviations. But it offered no answers about how those deviations and patterns affected the only thing that really mattered – the quality of the product. The answers must be included somewhere within the data set that we explore. They have to take part of the meta model of the entity that we analyze, or we must be able to deduct it from attributes of other entities that are similar enough to the one we study (i.e. the data on the quality of the product of hundreds of similar or identical machines worldwide, in case of PPP).
You can read more in the May 2013 issue of the Mreža magazine (Croatian language only), or later during the year translated to English at Alen's Thing Place.
This work is Copyright of Alen Gojceta. You are not allowed to use the article, or any of its part in commercial or academic work without citing the author and this link.
The first full year of Alen's Think Place is represented by 12 peaces of written work. Here are the summaries and links to 5 business articles translated to Englsih, 5 blog posts and 2 reviews of positioning / branding strategies…
The 2010 was the first full year of Alen's Think Place is represented by 12 peaces of written work:
Alen's think place is meant for business professionals, mostly for those who deal with sales, marketing, CRM and business strategies in general. I hope that you have found value for yourself and that you will keep finding it at www.gojceta.com.
I used the www.gojceta.com to write the follow up of the CRM seminar I hosed. The conclusions are interesting to any professional dealing with CRM.
In this post I announced the facelift of my CRM seminar and shared some thoughts about the approach.
The "bdp Triangle" is among my best sales concepts….
I just couldn't resist to write the article about this unconsistent branding approach…
A small "Alen's ThinkPlace" strategy: consistent content to the consistent audience using a single language…
The article elaborates the problem of a "CRM organization"…
Small insight in my latest article published in Mreza magazine through a story inspired by a true event…
English preview of the implementation part of my April article – the 7 wisdom for a successful CRM implementation…
The concepts from this article from 2002 are just today becoming really mature and useable…
In 2010 this was one of the most read articles at www.gojceta.com. Check why…
A pretty long article about Interactive Voice Response set in two parts. Still relevant, but with the major change about the handy nature of mobile Internet access. Read first the part one below 🙂
Part one of the above article.
All of the work above is copyright of Alen Gojceta. If you use it in academic or professional publications, please cite the author and the respective sources.
One of my recent articles published in Marketing UP magazine in May 2007 and translated here to English. You can find here some classical wisdom about segmentation.
The popular "20/80" metaphor of the Pareto principle reflects its simplicity and broad applicability. This is one of the most used and most cited principles in economy. Anyone who ever tried to trade on an open market can recognise this pattern.
Segmentation is a wide marketing topic, which, among other, helps understanding the value of each customer to your organization, and vice versa – it creates insight to what are the aspects of your products and services that your customers value the most. Such awareness enables adapting of business strategies to different homogeneous market groups that we call segments. Differentiating customers with regards to the value that they 'deliver' to the organization became particularly important in recent decades with highly saturated markets and consumers that show great immunity to the large amounts of marketing information they have been exposed to. The marketing response to such market conditions is basically answering the question: "how to keep the most profitable customers in the most efficient and cost-effective way?". Driven by the above mentioned transformation in market environments and by changes in technological capabilities of modern information and communication systems, the evolution of marketing has yielded some new and innovative concepts. Among those, the services marketing represents a fundamental change in the traditional market approach, followed by important concepts such as niche marketing, relationship marketing and the customer relationship management (CRM).The latter two concepts are mutually overlapping and complementing each other. Boundary between them is a wide "zone" of common postulates and shared principles. In this 'zone', the understanding of the value that customers 'deliver' to the organization, take a very prominent place. A number of segmentation tools and techniques exist that are used to support strategies aimed to identifying and retaining the most profitable groups of customers (customer segments).
The purpose of markets as well as the foundations of the marketing concept lies in exchange of value. How much are you aware of the value provided to your organization by each of clients you serve? It's a good question indeed, because the value is not allocated only within the tangible parameters, such as actual sales figures. It is the difference between costs and revenues, but much more than that. Doing business with certain clients for your organization can be matter of image, reference, or some other "intangible" benefits. Some clients, even if they do not contribute significant revenue to your business, can be your good messengers to a wide number of potential customers. On the other side, some others will take a significant place in your business books and stand up with figures, but a deeper analysis will discover that they are actually "value destroyers". There are different ways in which your customers can destroy value. Those can be reflected in requests for (unreasonable) product customizations or frequent urgent deliveries. Other aspects of destroying value could be wide exploiting of customer service rights, taking advantage of long delays in payment and by generating similar expenses or other extraordinary pressures to your organization's resources. We often justify such actions by customer's revenue figures. However, we should ask ourselves: is it the volume of transactions on our bank account the purpose of our business? Or is it perhaps the amount that remains after the transactions are completed, through a longer period of time?
There are different methods of recognizing the value of customers for the purpose of grouping them into segments. These methods range from the most primitive measurement of sales figures to complex models that include the allocation of the current and future value creation such as potential referrals or future use of other products in your portfolio. In practice, the value of a client is measured by different surrogate measures. Some well known segmentation methods are RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value), usage analysis and Customer Lifetime Value.
Within Customer Relationship Management strategy, the most suitable segmentation is the one based on the so-called Customer Lifetime Value. It is used to define the general approach to the customer set. The Customer Lifetime Value is a complex, synthetic value gained by allocation models that take into account both present and future value exchange factors. To simplify identification of present and future "value creators" marketers seek to identify visible client attributes that indicate his or her tendency toward specific behaviors that affect value creation. For example, within a costly customer lifetime value segmentation project, conducted by one of America's leading insurers, among other findings, they understood that the size of individual's US credit score represent a very strong "value creation" predictor.
Director of Customer Service department of one of Croatian telecom operators, when arguing the substantial investment in segmentation and distinctiveness of customer service levels, said: "We started the investment when we realized that we couldn't afford any more the highest service levels to all of our customers." What the telecom operator actually did in that occasion was to use the ABC method to diversify approach to their customers based on their value creation. The best customers were entitled to the so-called premium service. When deciding about the granted quality of service, the CRM system was able to distinguish not only those which created value, but those who were destroying it as well. The investment in a customer's service level was reciprocal to his or her contribution to the profitability as the operator's measure of sustainable success.
For a better segment "visualization", the value levels within the ABC method are often marked by descriptive terms such as "bronze", "silver" and "gold".
In the late nineties, the former Swiss monopoly telecommunications operator Swisscom, started a loyalty program to protect its market position during the market liberalization process*. The objectives of the program were focused on keeping the leader position, retaining the most profitable customers, while trying to avoid price wars with the newly introduced competitors. The loyalty program was delivering certain benefits to its members. Based on the data collected through the program, Swisscom was able to analyze more than 20 target groups. Four segments were chosen based on the analysis. Using the ABC analysis method, different approaches were deployed towards each of the four segments:
– Premium customers: keep them loyal at all costs
– Profitable customers: keep them loyal and intensify cross selling
– Customers with medium consumption: offer packaged services, cross sell
– Unprofitable customers: there are no benefits without increasing consumption
The ABC method can easily be recognized by clients in the banking industry. The personal banker (or clerk) service is meant to be a lever of investing in "value creators." The remaining clients are left with the option of waiting in queues within the branches, the ATMs or other self-service systems. For the "worst ones", which can be described as "the value destroyers", the preferred channel of business is – the one with the competition.
The above described segmentation will differentiate customers according to their contribution and their potential profitability. It is obvious that it puts the needs of sales organizations in the focus (which client is better for ME).On the other side, it is good to know what customers find most valuable in our offer or our general approach. We'd like to know that in particular, for those that we value the most.
Contemporary markets are often perceived as collections of different business models (within the organizational buyer) and lifestyles (in case of consumer markets). Such determinants of our clients define the reasons why they would accept our value proposal. Benefit segmentation is a mirror in which we try to figure out how our customers segment their "suppliers market" based on their perception of value. In contrast to value based segmentation, the segmentation based on benefits puts the needs of customers in the center of the segmentation effort.
A business organization, whose business model is based on low costs or minimal inventory, will value your ability of flexible, frequent and timely delivery options. Two persons that purchase the same vehicle will base their decisions on completely different reasons. While one will value a prestigious brand and design, the second will be making the purchase based on safety features and high quality service network. This understanding of value that the customer perceives within our proposal can have a powerful impact on adapting the product / service, the marketing approach, as well as the pricing strategy.
Segmentation based on value will give us the answer to the question about who are the customers that are worth our best effort, while the segmentation based on benefits will help us to understand what this effort should look like. Modern marketing segmentation concepts keep confirming – Vilfredo Pareto was right.
*The idea use of Vilfredo Pareto's principle in this article was inspired by Art Weinstein's "Hanbook of Market Segmentation – Strategic Targeting for Business and Technology Firms", The Harworth Press, 2004
The original of this article has been published in MarketingUP, 05/2007 magazine. The article and the above English translation are copyright of Alen Gojceta.
The Swisscom business case is described in: Brown, Stanley A.; Customer Relationship Management – a strategic imperative in the world of e-business; John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd; Toronto, 2000.
If you decide to use this article or its parts for academic or professional work, do not forget to cite the author and the source.
© 2011 Alen Gojceta
Outbound telesales campaigns take part of many contemporary channel strategies. Those are often used to cover large customer base within sales models with simple transactions. There are plenty of arguments that support such approach, but there are some rules to respect as well. I have embedded these rules into the "bdp Triangle"…
Today's organizations that operate in intensively competitive environments need to adopt comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) strategies. These strategies are striving to integrate the one to one marketing principle. It fosters approach to each person, member of a large customer base, as an individual with his or her needs, characteristics and specific behaviors. This approach, among organizations embracing CRM, has brought customer interaction channels on top of the business agenda. In addition to traditional brick and mortar offices and ever present sales representatives, modern technologies brought new interaction channels that are by their very nature, more convenient to customers and more profitable to the organization. Besides the Internet, contact centers are the most important means of interaction with large customer base.
Development of management disciplines within call centers and increase of their complexity had impact on widening the area of their
applicability. Sharing knowledge among inexperienced agents, conversational scripts, intelligent call routing, education and quality assurance are just some of the challenges faced by management within call centers. However, pro-active calling activities have always been among their most challenging tasks. There are two different ways of such interaction: incoming (inbound) proactive activities and outgoing (outbound) calls.
An organization can proactively act upon incoming calls by anticipating needs of their customers by proposing products or services, in addition to fulfilling the original scope of the customer call. There are a number of processes, policies and technologies that support proactive proposals during incoming calls. Those will not be further discussed in this article. The following text will investigate the topic of outgoing telephone campaigns. Its multi-disciplinary and complex challenges have to balance contact center technologies with psychology, ethics, legislation, sales techniques and marketing know-how.
According to the recent data (2005) from Direct Marketing Association (DMA), in US, telephone marketing is ranked second with 47 billion dollars behind direct mail with 49.8 billion. These data are even more significant if one takes into account other studies sponsored by the same organization, which puts telephone marketing on the throne in terms of response rate with 5.78% and the rate of return on investment (ROI) with a significant 18.2%, higher than e-mail marketing with 16%. In year 2005, direct marketing will participate with as many as 10.3% in the United States' GDP.
About 50% of today's call centers in the United States use the functionality of outgoing telephone campaigns. About 45% of those use this functionality for telesales and telemarketing, and about 22% of them for market research.
By implementing call centers with outbound functionalities and campaign management capabilities, organizations gain control over a powerful tool that can bring significant business savings as well as realize substantial added value through sales and marketing campaigns. This is a bright side of the coin. Unfortunately, telephone campaigns have their dark side too. Conducting telephone campaigns which are inconsistent with consumer's expectations, their cultural habits or the current needs around company's offerings, can lead to a complete disaster. The consequences can range from a complete collapse of a specific campaign to many insulted and forever lost customers.
Only a doorstep is perceived as more private property than a private phone number. Knocking on the door of someone?s home by a sales representative or a call to a private phone number is the event that can create or destroy customer's good opinion about an organization.
Business phone numbers, as well as offices, are completely differently positioned in our minds. In order to perform work, purchasing decision-makers will be happy to listen to persons who represent their providers. Business phones are used precisely for this – to support business activities. Outgoing telephone campaigns in business environments are mostly used to create sales leads, and could be characterized as a combination of market research and sales initiatives. Already in 1989, the direct marketing department in Oracle Corporation used to sell their products using combination of a call center and internally developed application for campaign management. This fact is even more interesting when taking into consideration that they where selling databases worth several hundreds thousands dollars. Many were skeptical at the time about the strategy of the department which was headed by Tom Siebel, later founder of Siebel Systems. The strategy was confirmed by almost double the sales from the previous year.
Approach to consumers by means of telephone campaigns is different in many aspects. The consumer is more sensitive to privacy issues, he is protected by law, and cultural constraints may be of critical importance, especially in multi-cultural environments.
Consumers are hunters, not prey. Although the marketing industry has been targeting customers for decades, trying to arouse need and awareness about a product or service through various forms of marketing communications, at the end the customer had the opportunity to choose among various options. Growing awareness on consumer's rights, increased share of the educated individuals within a population and the increased customer care by organizations in deregulated and competitive markets, made the average consumer less open to the traditional marketing manipulations around attitudes and nonexistent needs. Modern consumer gradually realizes that he is the "boss." Outgoing telephone campaigns today are more complex and challenging for marketers than ever before.
Proactive outbound telephone campaigns should be run when combination of conditions that border by the "bdp triangle" are fulfilled. Its corner points are marked by: benefit, debt and permission.
bENEFIT implies a reason to call that brings true value to the customer through the so-called win-win relationship. The person who just bought an apartment will be satisfied if he or she gets the call from a sales representative from a company that deals with arranging documentation for property registration. In addition to the true value for the customer, calls may be considered acceptable when referred to "public good" such as humanitarian work or survey for market or social research. It is important to keep in mind that an organization whose existence depends on selling their products or services on the market, should not afford to make "dummy" outgoing calls. Each disturbance can instantly contribute to the negative positioning of the company's brand in customer's mind.
dEBT in the triangle indicates situations in which the customer is indebted to the organization. An example would be delay in bill settlement. Friendly warning or a reminder will not be taken for bad. For debt collection even telephone machines are often being used. However, the preferred form of the "debt angle" is the one in which the customer "feels obliged" towards the organization because of the high level of satisfaction with the experienced products or services.
pERMISSION implies customer's consent to be contacted. The permission may contain the desired time frame of a call, possible reason (content) and the desired (permitted) communication channel. Permission based marketing, opt-in marketing or consensual marketing are among the terms that mark the only excuse that you can use to choose the content that you will communicate to your customers, as well as the how you will do it. Permission given by a customer is a passport to overcoming all the limitations put through legislative, cultural or professional boundaries to customer relationship.
How to get a permission? Strategic imperative of modern businesses is their capability to communicate directly with customers. In such communication, customers should be able, through various means, to opt for communication channels and content. Also, a customer should be empowered to change his or her mind at any time, to change the preferred way of communication or the type of content that will be delivered.
Obviously, for successful outbound telephone campaigns several criteria should be fulfilled: calls should be triggered at times that match the timing of a need incurred, and should target periods that will not be perceived as a threat of privacy.
The recipe for a successful implementation of outbound campaigns is called Marketing Optimization (MO). MO comprises a number of technological and organizational means that enable automated creation and communication of content that is suitable for a particular consumer. Comprehensive CRM systems often support MO as its integral functionality, providing technological support for managing processes and business relevant data.
Proper implementation of outbound pro-active telephone calls successfully combines ethical and cultural norms with the legal framework and detailed customer information such as profitability, demographics, past behavior and the behavior of consumers with similar characteristics. An organization that successfully manages to juggle these challenges by orchestrating their people, processes and technology, will be gaining significant advantages through marketing of relationships and cooperation.
If you will use this text for publishing or academic pursposes, be so kind to cite the author and source: Alen Gojceta, Liderpress, 11/2005. Thank you!
The article elaborates the problem of a "CRM organization" – the one that behaves in a consistent way throughout all of its ways of operation, including different departments, people and processes. Author has put a special focus on "non CRM" departments, such as fraud detection and collections, because those often forget to take part of an integral CRM ecosystem…
If you will use this text for publishing or academic pursposes, be so kind to cite the author and source: Alen Gojceta, Banka, 03/2003. Thank you!
The main target of Customer Relationship Management is to provide consistent, yet differentiated, service based on one-to-one principle in all interactions, all functional areas and over all organizational layers to your customers. CRM starts by putting the needs of individual customers at the very center of the overall business strategy.
Mature CRM organizations are those rare that manage to provide an experience of a genuine, consistent and personalized service, simulating one to one relationship with their customers. CRM organizations acquire this kind of "CRM maturity" by a sufficient quantity and quality of collected customer data. They possess information systems that support "intelligent" interaction with a large customer base throughout business systems. Mature CRM organizations gain true acceptance of the corresponding philosophy in all aspects of their business operations including people awareness and adapted processes design. CRM is often emphasized to be a strategy, a business philosophy, rather than an IT solution. However, personalized relationship with each individual from a large customer base is achievable only by use of modern IT solutions. On the other side, it is important to understand that IT is just a part of a successful CRM story.
An often and among the most dangerous mistrusts is that it is enough to purchase a CRM solution to enhance the customer relationship. Well that's not the whole truth. Data collection is only feasible through a lengthy and carefully designed process. Consistency in managing customer relationships is a matter of internal organization and the degree of the maturity of the related business processes.
Gaps of a CRM organization are caused by lack in managing internal business processes and missing to create a corporate culture that makes CRM an integral part of the organizational ecosystem.
The most common CRM gaps are those coming from the inconsistency of the organization itself. Simply put, they occur when CRM is managed by a separate department or departments within the organization. In such cases there is often no true intrusion of a CRM strategy throughout the organization. The "CRM departments" are usually marketing, sales or a specialized customer relationship (customer care, customer intimacy) department. Relationship with customers is not "painful" in organizational segments that are oriented toward clients by their nature. Problems arise elsewhere.
Modern organizations often have obscure departments similar to police cells whose job is to identify and sanction "non-complying" customers. Unfortunately, these departments often maintain tradition of methods known from the time of economic system that where common throughout the world, regardless of the political system – the monopoly. One supplier and one attitude towards customers shorten to the phrase "you need us, we possess you anyway."
The most common business processes that are managed by "anti – CRM departments" are fraud management and collections (collecting accounts receivables). Both business functions often take an integral part of financial and telecommunications industries, known as strong acceptors CRM strategy. What makes the difference between collections and fraud detection processes during the economic monopoly and today, during the era of CRM (open markets), is the starting point of observation of the resulting problem (potential fraud or unpaid obligations). CRM organizations start from exploring reasons of a customer behavior. On the other side, organizations with recurrence of monopolistic behavior begin with the assumption that they are always right, and that customer is the sinner who should be sanctioned.
The basic assumption to the selective and intelligent approach to the potential customer "sins" would be the use of information technologies that are an integral part of modern CRM system. In such scenarios, business intelligence tools can recognize potential fraud or debt. Given the user's position within the CRM segmentation model, campaign management tools generate different messages (research or warning) or trigger different background processes (e.g. block account). The campaigns are carried by the interactive part of the CRM system, usually contact centers, and the results are forwarded to other departments such as finance or fraud management.
A mature CRM organization will, before marking a customer as a defaulter, check whether it is possible that there is a mistake made by them. They would check whether customer's transactions where properly processed within the systems. When this is done, they would contact the customer to hear his side of the story, without anticipating the final result. Only after the verification call, the CRM organization will put the "carrot" aside and start threatening with "sticks" in form of activation of different methods of pressure or forced collection. Even when the user is actually "guilty", CRM organization shall, before starting the "mechanism of force", try to collaborate with the customer to negotiate a solution of mutual interest.
Comparing advanced CRM organizations that have succeeded in merging CRM philosophy with its own corporate culture and some unsuccessful companies in this regard, significant differences in the resulting relationships with customers can be noticed.
There are two most common reasons: (1) inconsistency in customer relations through the whole organizational structure and (2) the process mismatch.
Everyday life is full of examples of how the experience in doing business with organizations that invest considerable effort in building advanced customer relationships can turn into a nightmare.
Recently my colleague from a neighbor country described his experience with one of their mobile operators. After he got married, his wife moved to the capitol, where he worked for some time already. When moving she required her bills to be sent to the new address. She notified the operator about her new family name. The change procedure was simple. She could have chosen between different channels of communication: Internet, fax, mail or telephone. She decided to use the Internet option, so she filled the form from the mobile operator's portal. After a short time, she got a call from the contact center agent who wanted to verify the entries. The changed data appeared on the protected area of the internet portal.
The process was simple and perfectly comfortable. Her mobile operator was gaining credit. Everything was fine until the time when the first bill should have arrived to her new address. It was just not coming to the new destination. After ten days from the standard bill date, the woman decided to take the initiative. She sent an e-mail complaining to the customer care department. Right after, she received an answer that the bill will be sent soon to the new address. In the meantime, she began to receive SMS alerts. The new bill was not coming. After an additional 10 days, she noticed an envelope with the logo of her mobile operator put aside of the mail boxes in her building. She took a look at it, and there was her maiden name which was not located on her new family mailbox. She paid the bill with almost 30 days of delay, when she already started receiving severe threats of service termination. The next month the data was correct. On the envelope was her new family name, but her new account balance was showing properly accrued interest for the "delay" from the previous month.
It is obvious that the young woman's mobile operator, despite all the investment in modern infrastructure, was unsuccessful in aligning back-end processes. Collection and the customer service departments where simply not in sync. Detailed insight into such CRM implementation can reveal its false side. All processes that are important to support the CRM strategy arise from the needs of the mobile operator, rather than the needs of its clients. Besides a good contact center application and a convenient customer facing processes, in essence the mobile operator has cared only about itself. As a service provider their major concern was to force the customer to pay. They did not care about finding out who was to blame of the payment mistake, nor they shown effort to connect the logic of user complaints about the bill with the errors in the address directory and the penalty interest. The colleague's wife remained faithful to the mobile operator despite the sad episode, but not without bitterness.
There are dozens of such examples on the market: a bank that accommodate their clients in leather armchairs at its branches while, on the other hand, they require travelling hundreds of miles from province to the nearest town to raise a loan; or the authorized car service with perfect kindness and state of the art customer processes with employees that forget to mention tax and cost of labor when proposing a service.
If you want to survive in today's market by being desirable to your customers, then you need CRM, a business strategy which originates from the very top of the organization, merges all departments, and integrates with all channels of customer interaction. It's a way of thinking embedded in all the pores of an organization, in all of its processes, including knowledge management and human resources, supply chain, partner relationships, as well as "customer punishing" processes such as fraud management and collections.
Organizations in mature phase of managing customer relationship are becoming able to implement real time dynamic (micro) segmentation in addition to the traditional segmentation based on "obvious" customer parameters. Personalization of the content, on the level of individual customer, is possible through matrure data collection and management. The article starts by an original introduction into the topic by an example of a restaurant with 150.000 tables…
If you will use this text for publishing or academic pursposes, be so kind to cite the author and source: Alen Gojceta, Banka, 09/2002. Thank you!
Technological maturity has made possible what we call today Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The need to establish a business strategy based on technologically supported CRM philosophy, emerged from 3 factors: (1) high penetration of products and services, (2) highly saturated competitive markets, and (3) a large customer base.
When managing relationships with a relatively small number of customers, we do not need support of advanced technological solutions. On the contrary, the most effective CRM is the one based on close, frequent contact, strengthened by mutual trust and understanding.
Many of us have a favorite coffee shop where the waiter serves us with the "usual" drink, or restaurants that are part of daily gastronomic routes, where they know that we do not want vinegar in the salad, or don't stand cakes with cinnamon. But let's imagine that a restaurant does not have 15, but 150,000 tables all occupied by "regular" guests. In this case there is a choice: the restaurant management could allocate one waiter for every 5 tables, or make use of technological benefits. In the first case we would achieve the desired effectiveness and personalized relationship with customers, but with the same cost and a lower level of service. Actually, to help a waiter remember returning guests and their habits, the latter would be forced to sit always in the same "district" between the 150,000 tables of the giant restaurant. It is clear that gastronomic experience in such a large restaurant would be far from ideal. Let's then rather split our tables in some 100,000 restaurants and enjoy properly for a little higher price.
Let's consider the other case and reach for technological solutions, the same ones that lie below any contemporary CRM solution. In this scenario, we would still have 150,000 tables, but the number of waiters would not be 30,000 any more, but much less, say 10,000, keeping similar level of service. Except for the efficiency achieved by a CRM system, the reduced number of waiters may be additionally achieved by the use of different workforce management or advanced enterprise resource planning systems, often seen in conjunction with modern CRM solutions. The best part of such solution would have been the choice for a guest to sit in any part of our imaginary endless restaurant, and be served by any CRM waiter in a similar, yet adapted (personalized) manner. This is the basic idea of CRM philosophy: collecting and storing information about customers and acting upon it seamlessly across the whole organization, with the aim to establish and maintain relations adjusted to the individual customer or a customer segment. Our CRM waiters would have been equipped by hardware and software solutions that would help them to identify the customer and gain insight into their habits and aspirations. Such IT infrastructure would have enabled them to simulate mature established relationships with their guests, similar to the situation of a restaurant with 15 tables and a returning guest. All that would have been made possible despite the fact that the CRM waiter and the guest have had never met before. Unfortunately, the atmosphere of the enormous restaurant would have still been far from pleasant, but the scope of CRM is not perfection in mapping customer requirements, but rather a compromise between aspirations and wishes of individual customers, and objectives of CRM organizations.
The 150,000 tables in a restaurant is just an exaggerated picture of what's going on during the past hundred years with dozens of industries from retail or manufacturing to tourism – the introduction of massive scale as a vehicle for maximizing revenues and reducing costs per unit of product or service. Such business model has led to the alienation of business organizations from its end users. Rapid growth of processing power on computer clients, improved database technologies and means of interaction with customers (Internet, call centers, laptops and PDAs) have enabled introduction of technologically supported customer relationship philosophy, the one that seeks to simulate intimacy of the increasingly lacking personal contact.
Traditionally, marketing strategies have been relying on market segmentation and targeting specific market segments by different marketing initiatives.
The most primitive, the most easily applicable and the most widely used segmentation is based on revenue (who spent what with us) or, in a more advanced case, on financial potential of our customers (who has the money to buy our stuff). The theory of marketing segmentation is being developed for decades, so today we have advanced models that go beyond profitability or demographics, taking into account a number of parameters such as lifestyle, social affiliation, cultural determinants and the like.
CRM philosophy has set new standards for the segmentation. Its purpose is to recognize the most profitable or potentially profitable customers, adjust the value proposal to their profile, keep them as customers and create long-term (profitable) relations. The tendency is to use advanced technology to make interactions with customers as close as possible to their most positive expectations under a reasonable cost for the organization. The usual number of customer segments in an average organization is less than 10. It is easy to conclude that the communication strategy based on 10 groups from a large customer base is nothing less than a compromise. At the bottom line, such marketing strategies, especially those based on profitability segments, are reduced to the most profitable, or even just the wealthiest customers. Often the maximum achieved is differentiation model where those get a better service levels (better response, higher quality,…).
Organizations that where pioneers in using technology for accessing large customer base, have often emphasized their ability to show the names of visitors of their web sites and outbound e-mail messages as personalization. Most often, they where able only to simulate the classic "Dear George" message, which would be followed by content, usually not adapted to the message recipient. Despite the trend to call this ability personalization, use of term personification would have been much more suitable for this capability to address the message recipient by his or her name.
Personalization is a higher degree of content customization within marketing communication. It is dominant within advanced CRM oriented organizations today. Personalized message contains customized content, in addition to the simple addressing the one to which it was intended. There are more organizational and technological ways to solve "recognizing" specific user affiliations towards certain content or his/her eligibility for a particular marketing proposal. The most common, and also the easiest way to identify user preferences are different customer query forms put as part of a contract or a form that would allow access to a protected part of the company's web site. The customer should be provided by opportunity to express his/her area of interest and communication preferences.
Such inquiries are known as permission-based marketing. The additional information collected allows classification of the customer into one of the segments defined within the organization. Additional data are gathered from the transactional history. From technological perspective, the more demanding part is later processing of customer information for the purpose of classification into segments defined within company's marketing strategy, and further splitting within sub segments that mark propensity to buy certain products or services. For this purpose, different tools are used to search databases, analyze the stored data and predict future patterns of customer behavior. These tools and methods are database query, OLAP and data mining, known under common name of business intelligence (BI).
Advanced CRM organizations today, usually combine interest areas and preferred channels chosen by the customer with the segmentation parameters from available relevant customer data. Targeted marketing campaigns are conducted by additional selection of potential members from one or more segments by using advanced BI processing.
The goal of a CRM strategy would be to adapt the business to the customer in an efficient and effective manner. Ultimately, this means that customer's experience would be marked by an unexpected match of approach, communication, offer and service, still preserving the organization's business objectives. How to achieve such combination? Organizations that have developed their businesses to the level of personalization filter large customer bases through different BI processes, using combinations of the mentioned parameters, to mark those most suitable for a specific offer or message. Such process is based on visible customer attributes (e.g. demographics) and historical behavior, disregarding the current behavior.
BI tools serve to recognize the potential behavior (e.g. purchase decision) of a targeted customer group, marked by some common features, based on the behavior of a test group or an existing (returning) customer group. Limits of personalization, such as too large segments and research on a case by case basis will be eliminated in the next stage of CRM evolution – the dynamic micro-segmentation. The prerequisite to the dynamic micro-segmentation is large amount of data about a particular customer combined with patterns gathered from a wide customer base. The quality and nature of the customer data is such that it is impossible to collect it through the traditional market research. The only way is to systematically gather information about user behavior during their interactions with the company. It is obvious that this phase of development of relationships with customers is intended only to "mature" CRM companies, i.e. to those that have a long lasting history of processing and storing of customer data.
Remark: to this view from "2002 perspective", we could add today (2010) that "mature" CRM companies are those that are able to leverage data collection through different means of Web 2.0. as well.
So, what is it all about? The simplest example of a dynamic micro-segmentation will be described on a case of a client of a bank calling its customer care call center. By calling the bank's toll-free number, the client is greeted by the latest generation of IVR system, with the automated announcement: "Dear Mr. George (Oh, no. Dear George again! 😉 ), we noticed that you where searching for information on housing loans on our web site. Do you want us route you to our credit department or you would like to choose an other service? ". If the user chooses to be routed to the credit department, not only will the system do so, but the clerk receiving the call will be automatically noticed on his screen about George's solvency and previous credit obligations. And that's not all. The screen will show the best possible offer for Mr. George: loan repayment period in accordance with his income, and previous habits. This is just an imaginary example, similar to the many that customers of mature CRM organizations are already starting to experience. These organizations are equipped with modern technologies that enable such data processing and managing customer interactions.
Of course, implementing and managing such processes it's not that simple. Considerable efforts of the organization are needed on the field of data integration from various sources and automation of background processes with systems that participate in customer interactions. A CRM organization in a mature stage will assure the same level of personalization through other channels as well, such as call centers or traditional "brick and mortar" offices.
Some analysts, one of them is Eric Schmitt of Forrester Research, believe that in the future the winning strategy of the majority of CRM organizations will rely on segmentation based on the traditional 10 segments instead of the infinite number of dynamic micro-segments. Schmitt believes that the advanced personalization, which may be based on a very large set of rules, is too complex for most ordinary mortals. Indeed you will not be able to achieve a level of dynamic personalization by a simple business decision. The maturity of business processes, data collection methods and information resources are required. Management understanding and tradition in collection and processing of customer data have no less importance. So why wait? Start today with the systematic collection of information about your customers and their behavior. Get ready for tomorrow's real time market segmentation.
This second part of the article published in Banka magazine in May 2002 talks about the recent technologies and trend in Interactive Voice Response (IVR) industry. While the first part of the article is pretty universal from time perspective, this one has to be read taking in mind that it was written in 2002. Today the major change is about today's handy nature of mobile broadband and all the services and applications that exist on modern mobile devices. Enjoy reading how the future looked like in 2002.
Part 1 of this article was posted immediately before the Part 2. I recommend to read it first.
If you will use this text for publishing or academic purposes, be so kind to cite the author and source: Alen Gojceta, Banka, 05/2002. Thank you!
Except the growth of the number and size of call centers and the need to reduce their labor costs, the IVR market growth forecasts rely on new technologies that enable easier and more natural interaction comparing to the one based on tone dialing and pre-recorded speech sequences.
Here we primarily emphasize Natural Language Speech Recognition (NLSR), Voice Recognition (VR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) technologies. Growing trends are as well driven by the new approach to using IVR technology, so called voice portals.
When it comes to advanced IVR technology, the future has already begun. Many solutions already exist. Due to the complex technology, there are a few suppliers of functional NLSR, TTS and VR software products in the world. To support these technologies, the leading providers of IVR systems usually integrate technological solutions by niche software vendors such as Nuance and SpeechWorks.
NLSR technology supports giving instructions to IVR by voice, using natural language. In the case of well-designed system, an order will be given in spoken like: "I want to make 550$ transfer from my savings to my current account". The machine will perform the operation without employee interference. NLSR makes possible what was hard to imagine, and in some cases, it is inevitable replacement to the traditional service management based on tone dialing.
TTS technology enables translation of any digitally stored text to speech. In this way it is possible to dynamically leave a message to a caller. For example, a bank client contacts the call center to check the status of his account or other routine interaction. After identification of the client, the IVR automatically communicates a personalized message that was entered into the system in form of text by a bank employee in the loan approval department: "Dear sir (Jones) we are still waiting for your mortgage estimation to close your credit claim. Please contact mrs. Patty on 123456. Thank you.".
VR technology is based on voice recognition algorithms that rely on original features of each individual's voice. VR is one among many increasingly popular biometric identification methods, based on specific characteristics that are unique for each of us, such as fingerprint, eye pattern, and even the DNA structure.
All this technologically demanding solutions are based on complex mathematical algorithms and artificial intelligence technologies, such as neural networks. Important role in its success have the ever more affordable processor power and storage capacity.
The companies providing these technologies have operated at loss for years, funded by capital from different sources. We are witnessing a market capitalization of the few that survived. New technologies are constantly making management of IVR services easier, transforming in this way the IVR platform from a system of compromises to a system of customer desires.
Voice portals are single access points that allow a caller to retrieve different types of information or manage personal communications services, by voice using the telephone service. Voice portals integrate Natural Language Speech Recognition (NLSR), Voice Recognition (VR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) technologies with the communication infrastructure and application expertise. Simply put, voice portals are IVR systems with extended functionality resulting in increased ease of use and a better flow of information, thanks to the use of new technologies.
The concept of voice portals is very similar to the concept of web portals, so the supported types of services are very similar to those on the Internet. Most of these services will be focused on content, communication, voice commerce (as opposed to online store) and remote access to business resources.
The advantage of voice comparing to web portals, is in the handy nature of telephone communication. Consequently, the information that the user "pulls" by a phone will be the one that is urgent, updated and time sensitive.
As in the case of web portals, business organization behind the voice portal is a labor-intensive and complex. Therefore, their maintenance is left to specialized organizations that provide such services on the market. In line with this need, recently a new category of service providers appeared – Voice Application Service Providers.
Today (2002) we can identify a large number of application cases using the advanced IVR technology in various industries such as booking systems in tourism and passenger transport, access to financial data and performing transactions in banking, retail and catalog sales, accessing information of the government administration, CRM applications at mobile service providers…
As already mentioned, the Croatian market of "traditional" IVR systems is well developed. We will still have a lot to wait for new technologies like NLSR or TTS due to high cost of development of new languages patterns. But this is the fate of all small "non English speaking" markets.
This is the English translation of an article published in Banka magazine in 2002. The article is about Interactive Voice Response devices (IVR). IVR systems find their "best fit" within call center environments where they represent the "finest compromise" of a CRM strategy. This is the first part of the article, addressing pretty universal topics of CRM, IVR and call centers, and therefore still actual, despite its origin from 2002.
If you will use this text for publishing or academic pursposes, be so kind to cite the author and source: Alen Gojceta, Banka, 05/2002. Thank you!
One of the basic postulates of any CRM (Customer Relationship Management) strategy is to make customer's interaction with the organization easy and accessible. Taking an ideal situation from the financial industry as an example, it would mean that each of us had his or her personal banking clerk on full disposition. In accordance with our wishes, let's call him Super personal banker. He would appear at our office or apartment shortly after we called him. In a pleasant atmosphere, he would carry out the necessary transactions, advise on investing our money, and help us select the optimal insurance policy or recommend the best plan to close our loan. Of course, in this ideal case, the client would not need to pay considerable financial amount for such a great service.
It is obvious that the ideal case for a bank is not the same as the ideal case for its clients. That's why the CRM strategy is usually characterized by multiple win-win challenges, where such wins-wins are necessarily converted into (winning) compromises-compromises.
Managing customer relationships is basically oriented to managing such compromises. By balancing between the cost of advanced customer service and provided total added value to the client, healthy development of a successful CRM strategy is assured.
The existence of a call center as supporting tool for an advanced CRM strategy also represents a compromise of its own. Whatever our position on cost is, a call center is a pretty expensive tool for any service provider, looking on a short or long term. The reason is simple – the price of labor makes up to 70% of the total call center cost. Exactly for this reason, there are machines that substitute different functions in the Call Center. These machines are called Interactive Voice Response (IVR) devices.
When talking about telephone communication, IVR devices represent one of the most common compromises of advanced customer relationship management. IVR is, in its principle, a computer that performs certain activities automatically upon caller's requests, given by phone.
IVR functions can be divided into two basic groups.
First, filtering phone calls based on who the caller is and what is the purpose of the call, and finally attaching such attributes to the call. Based on those, calls are further processed within the call center routing algorithms. Processing herein means operations such as identification of caller's segment, call routing to a particular agent or group of agents, triggering certain applications to enable agents solving caller's requests. All of it based on the attributes that IVR has attached to the call.
Second, automatically solving telephone inquiries, usually via dial tone or voice recognition. IVR can read the data, both dynamically from a database, or just play predefined recordings from static voice boxes. Responses to inquiries can be using voice, by fax, or via e-mail. Usually the answers are numbers synthesized by a computer, from pre-recorded sequences. There are several providers that offer IVR solutions with messages in Croatian language. Known examples of IVR solutions in Croatia are widely adopted various forms of automated telephone banking in different banks, popular Infozap and devices for activation of prepaid services for GSM operators.
IVR applications are mostly being easily made and changed by special tools. There are cases when those can not be changed. Such machines are usually intended for specific areas of application as complete solutions.
In the Computers and business insert of the last issue of Banka magazine (03/2002), there was a Gartner's estimation that IVR systems within call centers will be one of rare segments of the IT market that will record higher growth rates than average. This is not unusual. In the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region there is an average of 5 new call centers a day. Different analysts predict growth of the number of call center agents in Western Europe between 400 and 500% for the period 1999 – 2004. Although IVR systems can function as standalone solutions, their real value is shown when implemented within call center ecosystems.
The growth of the total number of employees in call centers and growing number of transactions and CRM processes that rely on telephone communication causes growth of the related work force cost. IVR solutions are among the most effective vehicles to reduce this cost. Of course, such solutions are driven by compromises introduced earlier in this text. IVR lets service providers to provision simple information to its users in an inexpensive and efficient manner, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Customers have the ability to access frequently requested services and information, in a relatively simple manner, with guaranteed quality and availability. The compromise is reflected here in the lack of human contact and unpopular scrolling through predefined dial tone menus.
There are two factors where IVRs significantly reduce labor costs in Call centers: reduction of the needed number of agents due to the calls managed by the IVR, and reduced turnover of agents who are released from boring, repetitive and uncreative activities.
Statistics say that, usage of an IVR system reduces the average call length for 18%, which cause reduction in related labor costs. In today's call centers around 12% of calls are resolved within IVR systems without any interaction with "live" agents. In some industries, such as financial services, entertainment and tourism, this share ranges even between 16 and 18%. Moreover 35% of total calls, before being routed to agents, are received to the IVR system.
This case study has been extracted from a Lucent white paper. The source document is available today (January 2010) at: www.goldsys.com/…/21-Gold%20Systems%20Health%20Risk%20Case%20Study.pdf
Health Risk Management Inc. (HRM) is a company from Minneapolis, United States, which since 1977 provides health care services and health risk management. As a part of the U.S. health care system, the HRM takes care of the medical insurance coverage for health treatment expenses. They assess health risk and serve as an intermediary between health institutions and health insured.
Like other companies in the industry, HRM already owned an IVR system which provided restricted functions to callers, such as checking the status of their requests. In order to reduce traffic and offloading call center representatives, HRM decided to introduce two IVR applications: the eligibility of patients for medical services and health insurance benefits. In addition, the existing application, that checked statuses of requests for refund of medical services, was enhanced.
While the old application was limited only to communicating the status of a request, the new one has added information about reasons of delays. In addition, the insured was able to get the information about the amount of health services covered by the insurer and the remaining of the amount to be paid. As part of advanced customer relationship, support for Spanish language was introduced. Some HRM customers had up 15% of the Spanish-speaking insured. The new application eased their access to information through their native language.
Calls to check eligibility of a policy holder for a particular health service where performed by physicians and medical institutions. IVR application used to return the information about the status of an insured, services covered by health policy and its expiration.
When integrating applications for medical benefits, the major challenge was how to communicate complex, accurate and understandable information from a wide selection of options in a reasonably short time. HRM was able to overcome this obstacle by achieving the most important compromise of IVR systems – releasing people of simple tasks, thus making a machine provision easy and fast automatic self-service, enforcing customer satisfaction.
HRM's success was complete. IVR system was very well accepted. It used to completely resolve 58% of 50,000 calls dialed during the first three months. More importantly, the surveys among users showed no objections to such self service "information supplying system".
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2… My next post will be the last two paragraphs of this article: "The future of IVR" and "Voice portals". My plan is to post it on January 11 2010.
Call centers represent the very hearth of a CRM strategy. Why do we need call centers? How do we choose it and what is the experience of those who decided to modernize their customer interaction environments? These questions and more I tried to answer in this article, published in 2002 in Croatian Banka magazine. I have translated it to English for the convenience of all English speaking visitors of this blog.
If you will use this text for publishing or academic pursposes, be so kind to cite the author and source: Alen Gojceta, Banka, 02/2002. Thank you!
Call centers today are unavoidable part of a successful strategy of advanced customer relationship management, known as CRM (Customer Relationship Management). In brief, CRM is set of rules, technological procedures and applications that companies implement, on large customer base, to simulate close relationship, which is usual between customers and small corner shops. Large customer base, in this case means thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of users.
CRM strategy was built during early nineties in economies where keeping the existing customer base became a priority due to high penetration of products or services and existing strong competition.
Looking from this perspective, the CRM strategy is a natural process that can be recognized already on economic models of ancient world – when the logistics and human resources where not capable for new conquests (which where very often the means of economic growth), fortification and preservation of existing properties used to take place.
Concept of CRM today suggests technology as being in the "first line" of relationship with the customer. This technology include applications for managing marketing, sales and provision of user services, including communication channels that allow managing interactions with individual persons, belonging to a large customer base, who influence buying decisions or is involved in use of products or services.
Call center, as technological solution for efficient and effective telephone communication with a large customer base, most often represents the very heart of a CRM strategy.
Choice of the most appropriate call center solution depend on the form and level of integration of business processes, number of daily calls, intensity of marketing campaigns, ratio between inbound and outbound calls and integration of different communication channels that would be used. As higher the quantity of calls (interactions) is, the more advanced Call Center technology has to be for management of inbound and outbound calls.
Users want to do business with organizations in a simple way. Take as example a bank customer that wants to know how and under what conditions to refinance a housing loan. By dialing a free phone number of the bank, he quickly gets the right person with the right information and, preferably, a solution to the problem in a form of revised contract received at his home the next day. Interactions as described are proved to assuring increased customer's commitment to a bank that provides such fast and efficient service. Study conducted in 1998 by the JD Power and Associates on a sample of 10400 users of services of five leading U.S. credit card issuers, revealed that price was not decisive. The study showed that the quality of service was the key to retention and customer satisfaction. In this type of business, the service is reflected in three major elements: the quality of call center contacts, transparency in payment processing and perceived financial strength and confidence about these companies.
Exactly due to the need for fast and quality interactions, some invisible items of call center operations can be critical to success. As larger the call center is (proportional of the number of daily contacts) as important becomes technological side of the solution to enabling the business success.
There are two magic formulas that indicate the success of a call center supporting CRM strategy: service levels, and customer satisfaction.
The level of service is measured in percentage of calls that are received and processed in a certain time frame compared to the total number of calls. The level of service of a call center is directly connected with intelligent call routing capability. This would ideally mean that the system automatically recognizes the phone number and the individual customer, anticipating his or her reason of call, and addresses the most appropriate call center agent to handle the call. If the most appropriate agent is busy, the system will, in order to preserve the required service levels, make a compromise and forward the customer call to the following most appropriate available agent. Thus, the system will try not to let customers wait too long or ultimately hang up the call. You certainly have that experience when, after your call, you keep hearing the famous "Wait a minute …" phrase for some minutes more than you can stand.
Such behavior is unacceptable for a service provider who wants to build long-term relationship with satisfied customers. Customer satisfaction is a direct consequence of the level of service, and other processes that affect the speed, quality and efficient customer service. Advanced call center technologies ensure that your call is not infinitely rerouted among agents and departments.
Also, after a caller establishes communication, the agent has to be enabled to perform the desired transaction, provide information or to start a process. Customer satisfaction depends not only on call center technologies. In addition, it is supported by a whole set of CRM applications and processes, including internal company organization. It is therefore important, when deciding about call center technologies that the platform is open and capable to integrate with different CRM applications.
Despite the fact that it is hard to intuitively perceive measurable results of usage of advanced call center technologies, the experience is positive. On larger call center solutions that engage fifty or more agent seats, advanced technology may affect increase of service levels to from 20% to 95%. It means that the number of calls not solved would be reduced from 80% to 5%.
Faced with deregulation of the market in Eastern Europe and aggressive new competitors who where realizing multiple growth rates, one of the leading telecommunications company in its region find itself in situation of redefinition of their business model, including managing of relationships with existing customers. After decades of enjoying the benefits of monopolist position, the company was forced to change the approach.
Given the relatively low market penetration, the challenge was twofold: to attract new customers and preserve the existing ones. Preservation of the existing customer base was the task of the customer care department. For the first time in their history, they started to measure the effectiveness of the existing call center. The results were disappointing. In some periods, almost 80% of the calls happened to be lost or otherwise unresolved. Users where giving up because of infinite redirections of calls. The existing system was not capable to support traffic peaks, so it simply used to refuse the calls or let them for long waiting.
A decision was made to implement a call center solution with advanced technologies and intelligent call routing, where agents where divided into dynamic groups based on their expert knowledge and skills. Transformation that followed was amazing – calls where positively solved within first attempt in 90% of cases. Users were satisfied and, combined with the efforts of the marketing department; the service provider has adopted growth rates comparable with the new competitors.
This is just one of dozens of similar examples. One well known case concerns Capital One, the credit card issuer. PricewaterhouseCoopers brings this case in their book on the CRM (Stanley A. Brown, Customer Relationship Management). After strong growth rates of customer acquisition, based on aggressive pricing policies and marketing approach, Capital One has lost its pace showing below market average growth rates.
After measurement of customer satisfaction, they realized that the ineffectiveness of their call center significantly increased with the enlarged customer base. Due to the increased diversity of their products and services, the need for segmentation and customized approach became more important.
With the introduction of technologically very advanced call center in combination with advanced CRM technologies, the level of customer satisfaction increased significantly. The average length of calls as consequence of increased efficiency fell to one third of the previously measured.
Modern Call center technologies do not only bring the benefit of satisfied customers. The same solutions that contribute to increased customer satisfaction reduce the costs of call center management, where human resources cover 60 to 70% of its total costs. Five to ten thousands of daily interactions make a very common number for a market of Croatian size. Such amount of calls can be generated by customers of a company which is among market leaders and puts strategic focus on modern channels of communication with customers.
Assuming an average call time of four minutes, saving thirty seconds per call, on pattern of 5000 calls a day, would mean saving more than forty man-hours per day. For the same functionality it would take five agents less. In the same way savings in network costs and other call center costs occur. This calculation is very approximate and does not include the distribution of calls during time, queuing, traffic peaks and a host of other factors. But the message is clear. Significant are savings than can be achieved by changing the business channel model. Good integration of business processes within the call center can significantly unload or even replace the traditional and costly forms of interaction with users, such as "brick and mortar" offices.
Call centers are a paradox of today's business philosophy that is focused on close customer relationship. From organizational perspective they look like sophisticated, automated mass production factories, while their end product is intimacy of corner stores and, consequently, user satisfaction.
In the next issue of Banka magazine's Computers and business, we will address technologies that enable automatic service provisioning, without direct client's contact with the call center agent, such as IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and CTI (Computer Telephony Integration).


text:
Me On Sound by Simon Power...
I've always loved sound. How you can paint pictures with it. Create your own worlds. A simple touch of reverb gives you a huge palace or a spooky dungeon. It's all about creating excitement and giving the listener more of it than they ever thought was possible.
I'm really very lucky. To have spent my entire career doing the job I love. Spending time with wonderful talented people in recording studios & post production houses. Learning whatever I can about the art of music production and film making. Creating new sounds and images. And hopefully making things that people can enjoy.
...A brief history
I sent a demo in to London's Capital Radio and got a job on the new Gary Crowley show.
I made jingles packages, on-air presentations and cut together interviews for what was to be a trail blazing new format show. They gave me a portable Nagra which meant I could travel round London's studios interviewing artists & musicians.
I got to chat with the likes of Heaven 17, Marc Almond, George Michael, The Stranglers, ABC, Prefab Sprout, Morrisey, Annie Lennox. All kinds of wonderful people. Then cut the interviews together on a couple of huge Studer reel to reels for that evening's programme.
At the same time I teamed up with James Asher. A library music composer who did a lot of television themes and film music. He introduced me to the idea of stock music, production cues and the basic ins & outs of running a home studio set up.
When I left Capital Radio all I wanted to do was set up a studio like James Asher's.
I was given a helping hand by Julian Marshall (Marshall Hain), a song writer & friend of the family who let me use his equipment until I could afford my own.
Using Julian's DX7 and an SK1 digital sampler, I recorded a track called 'Get on The Floor' which was released on the Champion record label.
Other releases followed and by the late 80's I was recording music that was getting airplay on Radio 1'sJohn Peel Show.
Following this success I met a production team called Absolute. Together we produced a number of remixes and dance hits including 'Don't Make Me Wait' and 'I Want Your Love'. During this time, I clocked up enough vinyl releases to fill an entire record box!
Absolute went on to produce the Spice Girls, Gary Barlow, Girls Aloud & are now an Ivor Novello award winning production duo with 7 UK number one's under their belt.
Publishing advances meant I could now afford my own studio and I moved on to remixing for Rotherham based outfit, Music Factory. I worked on tracks with a number of people including Will Gregory who soon after became the mastermind behind Goldfrapp.
With a growing reputation I produced remixes & cover versions as a full time job. Music Factory eventually became Tidy Trax and as dance act Angel Deluxe I had one of the first releases, 'I Wanna Be With You'.
My passion was still for film & TV music and when Music Factory set up a Library Music division for Sony Music UK, I was lucky enough to be contracted as one of the composers.
Then disaster struck and Sonyhit hard times with the Library Music idea being one of the first things they dropped. I was paid an advance, but the tracks I produced were never released.
Meantime I had been editing some audiobooks for a local firm. It was just a part time thing to help out, but as they got more and more successful they asked me to work there full time. Editing voice on quarter inch tape, engineering sessions and being on call for the actors & readers.
I was responsible for migrating the studios from analogue to digital production. Introducing a PC based system using platforms such as Soundscape and Wavlab.
After a couple of years this small provincial firm was bought out by the BBC Audio Division who decided to take over the studios as their headquarters. they gave me the post of Senior Audio Editor managing a huge output of BBC Audio releases.
Teaming up with BBC's commissioning editors for Comedyand Sci-Fi I got to work on dream projects like the audio releases of Little Britain, Father Ted, Mitchell & Webb and The Mighty Boosh.
I produced interviews, replaced published music, composed theme tunes, made documentaries, compiled DVDs of archive footage for added value and came up with ideas for future releases.
After chatting to Sci-Fi editor Michael Stevens, it was decided that I could compose some music for the audio release of I, Robot. This worked well and I was asked to composed music and spot FX for a series of upcoming Doctor Who Classic audio releases read by, among others Tom Baker & Sir Derek Jacobi.
At this point, I had been selling music online for a number of years under the pseudonym Elliot Simons. This was beginning to become popular and finally I began to see my compositions being used on a number of radio and TV ads, short films & PlayStation games.
I also began in-roads into filmmaking with an intensive two year period spent with an experienced cameraman, learning alot of the techniques needed to work in that hugely competitive field.
So in 2004, after a few Doctor Who releases, I decided to go freelance and produce them from my home studio, at the same time setting up an online business for production music and web media.
This was meonsound.
A few years later meonsound was a thriving small business producing music & sound design for the BBC, buyout production music for a number of online outlets, Podcasts for websites, magazines & events and moving full time into the area of filmmaking producing over 60 documentary films for music technology website, Sonic State.
In the first few years, a number of high profile clients used meonsound. Pilkita (China), ITV1, BBC2, BBC7, Broadcast Video Expo, Freeverse Games, Yamaha, Love Honey, StormBasics and Mamas & Papas. Many of these brand leaders in their chosen field. All benefitting from a reasonably priced, efficient service and a touch of meon magic.
Now things couldn't be better. My studio is now based in the loft of my Somerset cottage, surrounded by trees and hills and lovely folks and animals. I work all day and all night, but I try to keep weekends free, not get too obsessed and have a balanced life. But when you've got a perfect job like mine it's hard not to get completely absorbed in it. I enjoy every minute, that's for sure.
inside meonsound...
"I work with a great team on a friendly job-to-job basis...
Freelance producers, voiceover artists, actors, filmmakers and designers. It's all very amicable. When the work comes in, I brainstorm it and work out who's best to do what. When I can I'll produce it myself, because that's how I started out. As purely a one-man operation. But now it feels more of a little community. Which is great"
"Life can be really tough for small businesses...
They often end up with tiny budgets and impossible deadlines. In the current economic climate many industries are being squeezed dry and I work on a lot of projects where money's really tight. But it's benefited me over the years. I've learnt to work absolute wonders at affordable rates and people really appreciate it. I think that's why meonsound is having such a golden period. The big corporate agencies find it hard to operate in this climate. As an independent, people are coming to me for cheap alternative solutions."
"Lots of little jobs..
I've produced work for lots of different genres over the years. Fashion, sport, classic cars, music and broadcast technology, sci fi and gaming. And meonsound has got so many new and unique ideas. I approach things from all kinds of new perspectives to find the right solutions."
"Success happens when you least expect it...
I made a short film about a vintage car and it won a digital arts award. The project only took one day to produce, and it was made with a really cheap camera. But it's been very successful all round, which is really great. I think more than anything, it highlighted the meon media ethic. Working with great people, to produce affordable projects on a tight budget with limited resources. I'm happy doing anything that's in some way connected to the arts and in particular web media. I find it very exciting and enjoyable work."
Simon Power is sole proprietor of meonsound.
inspirational quote...
"Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads." Doctor Emmett Brown

subset: commoncrawl


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Justin Bieber Slapped With Fine in Dubai for Speeding
Justin, Justin, Justin... when will you learn to obey traffic laws? While in Dubai, Bieber was driving way over the speed limit in a white Lamborghini when he set off numerous speed cameras and was eventually pulled over by police.
According to Dubai newspapers (via FOX News), the 'Beauty and a Beat' singer was speeding through the United Arab Emirates city, when he was slapped with speeding violations that were, obviously, accompanied by fines. Knowing how fast Lamborghinis can go, we would imagine these fines are rather hefty, though we're sure Justin can pay his tickets many times over.
getting onstage
Better keep yourself in line, Justin, unless you want another stern talking-to from Miley Cyrus.
Watch the Justin Bieber 'All Around the World' Video feat. Ludacris


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Reading Eggs
When students log on to Reading Eggs for the first time they are presented with this screen:
If you would like your students to take the placement test the first time they use their login, you don't need to set anything, just direct them to the option "Do the Reading Test". If you prefer your students to skip the Placement Test and begin at Lesson 1 click "Don't do the Reading Test" option.
The Reading Eggs placement test consists of 60 questions that place children into the correct part of the Reading Eggs program. The test contains 5 questions that relate to each map. Below is a table showing where the children's results place them. When a child gets 3 answers incorrect they are placed at the map those questions relate to.
|Map 1
|Map 2
|Map 3
|Map 4
|Map 5
|Map 6
|Map 7
|Map 8
|Map 9
|Map 10
|Map 11
|Map 12
|5 correct
|10 correct
|15 correct
|20 correct
|25 correct
|30 correct
|35 correct
|40 correct
|45 correct
|50 correct
|55 correct
|60 correct
Reading Eggspress
On the first visit to the Comprehension Gym, students will be asked to complete a placement test.
The Reading Eggspress Placement test consist of 20 questions, when a child gets 3 answers incorrect they will automatically be assigned to the appropriate level within the Comprehension Gym and will be placed on either lesson 2.1; 3.1; 4.1; 5.1; or 6.1.
You can reset the placement test for students at any time through Student Progress*. Once you have selected the student(s) that you would like to redo the test you can select Change Progress from above the student list and then select the Reset Placement Test option.
*You will see that there are 2 Student Progress options on your menu bar, one is for Reading Eggs where you can reset the Placement Test for Reading, Writing or Clinker Castle; the second one is for Reading Eggspress where you can reset the Placement Test for Comprehension. Please ensure that you select the correct program option before resetting the test.
After the Placement Test has been completed you will see which level your students have been placed in Student Stats under the Initial column.
You can also use Manage Progress to change a student's lesson level.
Click here to view a lesson overview for Reading Eggs.
Click here to view a lesson overview for Reading Eggspress.


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My son LOOOOVES trains. Train everything. Train shoes, train clothes, train tracks, train stuffed animals, train utensils, train movies. So of course, books about trains are very high on our list of train activities and I can assure you, we not only own all these books, we read them everyday.
So if you are on the hunt for the best books about trains for preschoolers, this list is for you!
Related post: 20 Unbelievable Thomas the Train Gifts for Your Thomas-Obsessed Little Boy


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Susy Blu nickname for Susanna Pozzoli
I am an Italian photographer; I study interior spaces and atmospheres. I am interested in how places are characterized by the story that happened there. I never include portraits but the human presence is always strong and the trace of it is the main focus of my research.
I photograph in everyday situation and in natural light without interfere with the reality that I find but I concentrate on specific spots, working on precise projects very strict in terms of time and locations. Photography is my way to tell a story made up from existing places and people that I involve. I believe in art as a way to create social connections and a lasting reflection on behaviors and diversity between people.
Since 2005 I am working with video as well as photography but the two media are used in very different ways. In video I find a way to cut and underline or exaggerate some social situations. A part of my video projects is dedicated to the world of dreams while others are documentary oriented.
The beauty of the image itself remains a criterion.
The website will be permanently closed shortly, so please retrieve any content you wish to save.


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Annotate PDFs with Apple's Preview
Mac Tip #399, 26 August 2009
Preview, installed on all new Macs, allows you to add annotations to a PDF. This Tip shows you how to add ovals and rectangles of different colours, links and notes. It shows how to highlight text, add underlines and strikethroughs.
I suggest you start with the movie (about 7.5 minutes) where I demonstrate these techniques:
Use the Text Tool
In order to mark up a PDF with Apple's Preview you need to have the Text Tool selected. Find it either on Preview's toolbar or under the Tools menu.
Make sure to select the Text Tool before following any steps below.
Draw an Oval or Rectangle
To draw an oval or rectangle:
- Go to the Tools menu.
- Choose
Add Ovalor
Add Rectangle. The cursor becomes a crosshair.
- Click on the page and drag to draw an oval or rectangle.
Change line colour, thickness and style
You may change the colour, thickness and style of lines on the shape you draw:
- If necessary, double click on a shape to select it. When it is selected a grey box is displayed around the shape, with a 'handle' in the bottom right corner.
- Call up the
Inspectorfrom the
Toolsmenu. Make sure the
Annotation Inspectortab is displayed.
- To change the line color click in the color patch. The
Colorspalette is displayed. Choose a new color and close the palette. The shape you've drawn changes colour.
- To change line thickness enter a new value (in pixels) in the
Thicknessbox, then press
Return. The shape's line thickness changes to the new size.
- To change the style of the line check or uncheck the
Dashedcheckbox. The line is displayed as solid or dashed, according to your choice.
Add a link
Items such as words and images can link to an URL on the web, or to another page in the same PDF.
To add a link:
- Choose
Add Link. The cursor changes to a crosshair.
- Drag around a word or image. A grey shaded link selection box appears.
- If necessary, call up the
Inspectorfrom the
Toolsmenu. Make sure the
Annotation Inspectortab is displayed.
- In the Inspector window make a choice from the
Actiondrop-down menu:
Link within PDFor
- To link to a URL (web page): enter the URL in the text area that appears after choosing
URLfrom the drop-down menu. Then click the
Set URLbutton. The link will be saved with the document.
- To link to another page of the same document: after choosing the
Link within PDFaction, navigate to the destination page within your PDF, then click the
Set Destinationbutton in the Inspector window. The link will be saved with the document.
Add a note
You can save Notes within your PDF. These might be reminders to check something or messages to other users of the PDF.
Notes can have specific colours. They are represented by an icon within the PDF and are displayed in an area to the left of the page. Under the
View menu choose to
Show or
Hide Notes.
To add a Note:
- Choose
Add Note. The page of your PDF shrinks to create a grey 'sidebar' on the left.
- Click in your document at the point where the Note should appear. An icon is displayed on the PDF page and a Note appears in the left 'sidebar'.
- Type your notes into the Note in the left sidebar. It will be saved with your document.
- To move the icon drag it to a different location on the page.
- To change the colour or style of the icon: If necessary, call up the
Inspectorfrom the
Toolsmenu. Make sure the
Annotation Inspectortab is displayed.
- To change the color of the Note and icon click in the color patch. The
Colorspalette is displayed. Choose a new color and close the palette. The icon and note change colour.
- To change the icon for the Note choose an option from the
Icondrop-down menu.
Highlight, strikethrough or underline text
To highlight, strikethrough or underline text:
- Select some text with the Text Tool.
- Make a choice from the
Mark Upmenu:
Highlight Text,
Strike Through Text, or
Underline Text. The text is marked up according to your choice.
Remember to Save the document if you want to keep any Annotations you've made.
Do you have any comments on this Tip? Add them below.


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Kentucky Speedway gears up for fun-filled race week
NASCAR race closes weekend on Saturday
NASCAR racers and fans alike are gearing up for fun-fueled entertainment at the Kentucky Speedway as it prepares for the Advance Auto Parts NASCAR tripleheader weekend.
Beginning Thursday, the speedway in Sparta, Ky., will host its annual series of races, events and camping that will draw in NASCAR drivers and fans with the anticipation of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, a race making its third appearance at the Tri-state racetrack.
But the Saturday race isn't all fans can enjoy. The speedway will play host to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series UNOH 225 at 8 p.m. Thursday, a race in its 16th year that's given victories to young racers like James Buescher and veteran Ron Hornaday Jr.
Following Thursday's race is the NASCAR Nationwide Series Feed The Children 300 on Friday, now in its 14th year at the Kentucky Speedway.
Topping off the tripleheader racing event is the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Quaker State 400 at 7:30 p.m. Saturday to conclude what the Kentucky Speedway says is a weekend full of music, food and camping in a high-energy atmosphere.
Racer Brad Keselowski will be hoping to defend his title from last year's race.
In addition to the three weekend races, fans are invited to pre-race celebrations taking place a half hour before each race.
Ernie "Turtleman" Brown of Animal Planet's hit show, Call of the Wildman, will be visiting the fan zone during the pre-race party for the Quaker State 400.
The weekend will also feature a concert by American country music star Billy Currington before the last race at 5:15 p.m. Saturday.
The Kentucky Speedway also offers camping packages for the popular June race week.
For more information about events, tickets and camping, visit the racetrack's website.


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Save on this event with ACTIVE Advantage
Your Advantage member discount automatically applies at checkout
Save on this event with ACTIVE Advantage
Members save up to $10 on registration fees and more!
Advantage members save up
to $10 on registration fees!
11 Photos and Videos
About this event
Myrtle Beach Boardwalk8th Avenue North Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
This surfing-themed half marathon & 5K, with its surfboard finisher medals, surf style bands and awesome post race beach party, is a MUST do race on the Atlantic Coast. Sign up for the Myrtle Beach Mini Marathon, Coastal 5K or Doggie Dash and experience a year round, nationally acclaimed vacation destination as you like it best…on your feet!
Kick off the weekend of running by participating in the Coastal 5K and/or the Doggie Dash on Saturday! All 5K participants receive race bibs with timing chips, tech t-shirts, and awesome surfboard-shaped finisher medals! Doggie Dash participants will receive Doggie Bandanas and race bibs, however, it is NOT a timed event. All proceeds benefit the Grand Strand Humane Society.
Sunday's Mini Marathon (13.1 miles) features over 5 miles of oceanfront running! After the event, enjoy post race goodies, beer, and....maybe even take a swim in the warm waves. Why not, it's Myrtle Beach, come run and have an awesome time!
Event details and schedule
Please visit our website for complete event information.


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Rev. Arturo Sosa, SJ, elected as 31st Superior General of the Society of Jesus
Posted in: Jesuit Organizations
During General Congregation 36 in Rome, Jesuits elected Rev. Arturo Sosa, SJ as the 31st Superior General of the Society of Jesus. Fr. Sosa, the former Provincial of the Jesuits in Venezuela, has the honor of being the first Superior General from Latin America. Fr. Sosa entered the Society of Jesus in 1966 and was named Provincial of Venezuela in 1996. Learn more and read his first interview as Father General here.
From www.gc36.org