CYBAEA, at the time trading as The PCA Group, the leading Marketing and Customer Relationship Management consultancy for the mobile telecoms industry, devised and implemented a Real Time Marketing Pilot for Vodafone UK. The Pilot delivers dramatically increased cross-sell rates and customer satisfaction. As a result, Vodafone UK is now further enhancing the solution and will extend it across other customer facing channels within the UK.
Vodafone UK, a member of the world’s largest mobile community, wanted to ensure that every contact with a customer was treated as an opportunity to make an appropriate and relevant offer to them. However, on the assisted channels (call centre and retail stores), Vodafone UK was relying on the quick thinking of the agents to identify cross- and up-sell opportunities. This was simply not sustainable given the increasing complexity of the product portfolio and a customer’s individual situation at any point in time.
CYBAEA demonstrated how Real Time Marketing could identify the optimum service offering for an individual customer at any point in time by combining the current customer data with dynamic offers and offer rules, and were subsequently retained to define, design and programme-manage a pilot on the Vodafone UK consumer base, operating through both Call Centres and Retail Stores.
How was this done? The solution prompts the agent in real-time with the best offers for the customer, based on a combination of probability of take-up, value to the customer, and value to the organization. The offers are accompanied by scripts detailing the content of the offer and the rationale for mentioning it. The Real Time Marketing Pilot was developed to support 1,000 simultaneous users and achieved 10 recommendations per second.
With take-up rates of over 30% and high customer satisfaction with receiving the offers, the Real Time Marketing solution is markedly different from the traditional outbound marketing approach.
“We have seen phenomenal results already, and the Real Time Marketing Pilot has clearly demonstrated the huge potential for selling through the service channels.”
“Outbound marketing will not go away but it clearly faces challenges in the form of customer fatigue and increasing regulation,” explains Martin Dixon-Tyrer, Director of Customer Relationship Marketing at Vodafone UK. “The Real-Time Marketing solution gives us a different way of getting our message across to our customers in a way that benefits both them and us. We have seen phenomenal results already, and the Real Time Marketing Pilot has clearly demonstrated the huge potential for selling through the service channels.”
“Real time marketing is critical to sustaining Vodafone’s leadership position in the UK market,” says Dixon-Tyrer. “It is by treating each customer contact as an opportunity to deliberately engage with the customer in a meaningful dialogue that we are able to build true relationships and lasting customer loyalty.”
A meaningful dialogue is one that is relevant to the individual customer and to the customer’s current situation. The Real Time Marketing solution is able to take into account a comprehensive profile of the customer in order to present to the customer service agents or retail store advisors a short list of highly relevant offers to the customer in front of them.
“We find that both our customers and our staff greatly appreciate the Real Time Marketing solution,” comments Dixon-Tyrer. “Customers feel uniquely valued because the interaction is not simply a hard sell but an informed discussion about them and their situation. This in turn inspires our staff to use the system.”
The agents and advisors remain in control throughout the interaction, but the system ensures that the time is spent on activities that are relevant to both the business and the customer, and it provides structure and guidance for the interaction. The cross-sell offers covers multiple products as well as offers for retention, customer survey, and data validation.
“The Real Time Marketing solution delivers impressive results,” says Dixon-Tyrer, “clearly demonstrating the potential for increased sales and satisfaction through service channels.”
“The Real Time Marketing solution delivers impressive results, clearly demonstrating the potential for increased sales and satisfaction through service channels.”
“CYBAEA were instrumental in helping us to achieve this success,” adds Dixon-Tyrer. “We would not be this far today without them.”