As we noted in an earlier post, customer analytics can play a big role in making marketing efforts more efficient and less expensive. Companies of all sizes are using it to guide their sales and marketing efforts. Although customer analytics is still a new method, plenty of companies have success stories to tell. Here are a few of them.
- Westpac Banking Corp of Australia wanted to capture, centralize and analyze customer activity data such as ATM usage and call center interaction from its 12 million customers. Using a customer analytics platform, the company developed a program called KnowMe. Based on analysis of customer behavior, the program provides a 360-degree customer profile. Company analysts used results to match customers with new programs or offerings. In nine months, the program enabled Westpac to grow its customer engagement from 1% to 25%, yielding higher revenue and more loyal customers.
- CVS Health launched a call center pilot program and began experimenting with predictive behavioral routing. The program categorized customers into six behavior groups. Next, personalities of call center agents were matched with customers they would best engage with. The behavioral analysis worked. The pilot reduced call times and improved agent performance. The program was so successful, it was taken to full production.
- MGM Resorts International, the Las Vegas-based funmeisters, wanted to improve the customer experience of the millions of people who frequent MRI properties on the strip. Business leaders wanted to deliver consistent services through the company’s 45 Las Vegas properties. They wanted to know how customers interact with the MRI brand and what kinds of travel and hospitality decisions customers make.
Company analysts realized that they weren’t collecting necessary digital information or personalizing online content on their web sites. To fix this problem, they used a suite of customer analytics products. These tools helped them improve data collection, tap into social media and manage all MRI online properties. The research team tagged content on 18 different MGM websites to create a consistent data layer across all company digital properties. Then they ran experiments, such as the kind of information to show in the right-hand column of a site when a customer searched for hotel rooms. When the team conducted side-by-side preference tests, the data was useful and sometimes unexpected. The result: a 7% increase in revenue.
- Virtusize has a new way to buy clothes online. Although online shopping for fashions can be fun, it can be frustrating, too. One of the biggest headaches concerns sizing. There’s little agreement about what a specific size is. This lack of standards is responsible for return rates of 50% to 80% and cart abandonment rates, which range from 60% to 75%. This lack of a virtual fitting room prompted Stockholm-based Virtusize to make it easier for customers to get a good fit for any type of clothing. They asked site visitors to provide the measurements of a favorite dress shirt or pair of jeans. This data created profiles, which included reference garments. These enable customers layer a silhouette of the garment they are interested in buying over the silhouette of the garment they already own.
Clothes Horse, another online fashion retailer, has built a data-driven recommendation engine, which uses data (body type, favorite brands and fit preference) gathered from website visitors and clothing manufacturers to create a comprehensive, third-party database of fit data. Proprietary-built algorithms that take things like fabric into account when making a recommendation underpin the engine.
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Mohana Bhrugubunda
Director of Business Development
About Mohana:
Mohana brings more than 13 years’ business development, pre-sales, account management, program management experience to his work. He has a strong technology background and has worked in the banking, insurance and telecom industries. Mohana holds an MBA in Marketing, Managerial Analytics and Finance from Kellogg School of Management. He lives in Charlotte with his family.
