Capability: Customer Strategy

Exploring Braze: optimising your CRM by leveraging key features

Posted on: 1 September 2023
Exploring Braze: optimising your CRM by leveraging key features

Braze is one of the fastest growing CRM tools on the market. It enables brands to be truly app-first and deliver enhanced and personalised real-time customer experiences without complex and bulky ETL or batch processes which often involve painful and delayed overnight data loads.  

Leveraging effective marketing technology is now critical for a business’ long-term success. It allows businesses to stay ahead of the competition by understanding and adapting to everchanging consumer behaviours and tailoring experiences that best reflect their needs. 

Braze is a leading platform in the CRM space, having recently been scored as ‘leader’ within The Forrester Wave™: Cross-Channel Marketing Hubs in Q1 of 2023. Its innovative approach to connecting with customers has been a gamechanger. With a particular focus on digital messaging, it has established itself as an accessible, customisable and specialised tool on a global scale.  

In this blog series, my multidisciplined team will lift the lid on Braze and uncover the key features we see within the platform that are certain to deliver growth and take your use of Braze to new heights.

Our partnership with Braze

As a trusted Braze partner, we help brands get the most from the platform by supporting in all areas, from platform integration and audit to campaign management and optimisation. Our Campaign Operations team is well versed in the platform, with each member who interacts with Braze being certified in the platform. We invest in our partnership with Braze by further upskilling our team to a high standard, with multiple team members holding more than three different certifications ranging from the marketer exam to the digital strategist, enabling us to support brands in getting the most out of this amazing platform.

Our experiences and certifications have enabled our development of a set of Braze Accelerators specifically designed for CRM teams striving to achieve better results in a shorter timeframe. They have also contributed to our team being awarded Agency Partner of the Year in 2022 for our work with Domino’s in assessing their campaigns, enhancing their understanding of their customers’ behaviours and identifying personalisation opportunities that bolstered their testing capabilities and paved the way for more effective outcomes.

If you’re interested in learning more about Braze, and how CACI can help you in driving the most value from your Braze investment, be sure to get in touch with us.

Continue reading:

Blog 2 – How to elevate your brand through the power of Braze’s Sage AI suite

Blog 3 – Leveraging Braze’s Winning Paths to augment Canvas performance

Blog 4 – CACI’s Braze City x City 2023 takeaways

Blog 5 – How Braze’s Canvas components personalise marketing journeys

CDP vs. SCV: why choosing between the two is a big mistake

Posted on: 23 August 2023
CDP vs. SCV: why choosing between the two is a big mistake

In our previous post, we explained the role of the Customer Data Platform (CDP) in modern marketing architecture. Now, we turn our attention to another critical component of the marketing stack – the Single Customer View (SCV). If you’d like to read all the blogs right away, you can register here to access the complete series.

What is the difference between a CDP and a SCV?

While the CDP and SCV are often confused with each other, they serve different purposes and have distinct characteristics. In this post, we will explore the benefits of having an SCV in the foundation layer and how it differs from the CDP.

Having a Single Customer View (SCV) in the foundation layer provides several benefits for businesses. Firstly, it enables businesses to build a comprehensive understanding of their customers by providing a unified and persistent view of customer data across all touchpoints. Secondly, it allows businesses to implement governance for enterprise-wide data management, ensuring data quality and consistency. Thirdly, it supplies a reliable source of customer data for analytics, reporting and decision-making. Finally, it lays the foundation for personalised experiences by providing a complete picture of the customer that can be used by marketers to deliver targeted and relevant experiences.

The SCV is where your customer data is mastered and where your business logic and definitions are applied. The output is a clean set of validated data that is presented in a useful way for your business and is ready for use in your engagement and activation layers. The SCV is where your business can address some common and critical issues with data, such as:

  • Validating and cleansing your data
  • Standardising of output and definitions
  • Consistent application of common business definitions and logic
  • Curation and presentation of data based on business application, making the data easy to use

On the other hand, the CDP is a more marketer-centric tool that empowers marketers with the ability to activate omni-channel personalised customer experiences. It is designed to make it easier for marketers to access and use customer data without relying on data engineers or IT teams. The CDP enables companies to use customer data to deliver targeted and personalised experiences across all channels.

While both the SCV and CDP are valuable tools, they are not interchangeable but instead play complementary roles.

Failing to have both an SCV and a CDP can lead to significant risks and negative impacts. For example, without an SCV, companies may struggle to make sense of their customer data, leading to missed opportunities for personalisation and engagement. Without a CDP, companies may struggle to activate that data and deliver personalised experiences, leading to lower customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Ultimately, businesses that want to improve their customer experience should have both an SCV and a CDP. While the SCV provides a foundation layer of customer data, the CDP empowers marketers to activate that data and create personalised experiences.

How can CACI help?

As subject matter experts at CACI, we can tell you that a well-implemented CDP can be a game-changer for businesses of all sizes and we have hands on experience with many brands including ASOS, Kingfisher, L&G, PlayStation, Telegraph, EasyJet and DFS.  If you’re interested in learning more about CDPs and how they can help your business, please don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our experts.

In the next post, we’ll consider how the CDP pairs with another key component of the modern marketing stack, the Customer Engagement Platform (CEP). Or if you’d like to download the full blog series in advance, click here to download.

Want to speak more about CDP and it can help you elevate your customer and marketing strategy? You can contact us here to speak to one of our experts.

Continue reading:

Blog 1 – How a CDP can transform your customer experience architecture

Blog 3 – CDP+CEP: A perfect pair for a seamless customer experience

Blog 4 – How to avoid pitfalls & drive results in CDP implementation

Blog 5 – Using CDP to design a successful business operating model

How a CDP can transform your customer experience architecture

Posted on: 8 August 2023
How a CDP can transform your customer experience architecture

This is the first post from our new series on Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). From debunking common misconceptions to exploring the power of combining CDPs with other cutting-edge technologies, we’ll be diving deep into all things CDP – and showing you how to make the most of this game-changing technology. If you’d like to read all the blogs right away, you can register here to access the complete series.

What is a customer experience architecture?

If you’re in the world of marketing, you’ve probably heard of CDPs. But what exactly are they, and how do they fit into a modern marketing architecture?

Marketers can find CDP vendor websites confusing due to their use of language that may make CDPs sound like other components in your architecture. For example, they may claim that CDPs bring together all your customer data in one place (like an SCV) or can deliver highly personalised customer experiences (similar to other marketing platforms). However, despite this confusion, CDPs play a critical role in modern technology stacks. In this blog post, we will provide a fresh perspective on the topic to help explain the role of the CDP and its place in modern marketing architecture.

Where do CDPs fit into modern marketing architecture?

At CACI, we view modern marketing architecture as a framework with five layers:

For many vendors, CDPs typically belong in the activation layer of this framework. It takes data from the foundation layer and then feeds marketing technology in the engagement layer with data in the format that marketers need to deliver highly personalised experiences.

Some CDPs may, however, offer more foundational layer capabilities whilst others can be more engagement focused. For simplicity, our framework defines the primary purpose of the CDP is to activate marketing data, which is why we put it at the heart of the activation layer.

How can a CDP enhance your customer experience architecture?

It’s important to note that a CDP should be thought of as marketing technology, rather than data technology. Its role is to empower marketers with data, removing their reliance on data engineering and allowing them to focus on strategy and campaign execution. A CDP brings a lot to the party, providing marketers with the tools they need to create effective campaigns and drive business results, such as:

  • A CDP can natively capture digital data, making it easier for marketers to activate audiences across a variety of MarTech and AdTech channels in real-time.
  • By enabling the delivery of highly personalised experiences across channels, a well-implemented CDP can help businesses improve customer engagement and increase conversions.

How can CACI help?

As subject matter experts at CACI, we can tell you that a well-implemented CDP can be a game-changer for businesses of all sizes and we have hands on experience with many brands including ASOS, Kingfisher, L&G, PlayStation, Telegraph, EasyJet and DFS. If you’re interested in learning more about CDPs and how they can help your business, please don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our experts.

In our next post, we’ll explain why businesses should not choose between a CDP and a Single Customer View (SCV). If you can’t wait until then, you can register here to download the whitepaper which contains the full blog series.

Interested in learning more about how CDP an support your customer strategy? Contact us to speak to one of our experts today.

Continue reading:

Blog 2 – CDP vs. SCV: why choosing between the two is a big mistake

Blog 3 – CDP+CEP: A perfect pair for a seamless customer experience

Blog 4 – How to avoid pitfalls & drive results in CDP implementation

Blog 5 – Using CDP to design a successful business operating model

From Support to Sales: Unlocking the Potential of WhatsApp Business for Enterprises

Posted on: 2 May 2023
From Support to Sales: Unlocking the Potential of WhatsApp Business for Enterprises

How WhatsApp and Braze are enabling conversational customer engagement, support, and overall business growth. 

Business Chat Customer Service via Text

If you haven’t considered adding WhatsApp messaging to your business strategy, you could be missing out on an effective channel to power customer engagement, support, and overall growth.

Messaging apps are becoming the channel of choice for customers wanting to connect with businesses. In fact, a survey in 2020 discovered that 75% of respondents prefer this method compared to other channels.

With just over 2 billion monthly active users and an 85% penetration rate in parts of Latin America, Asia, and Europe, WhatsApp is currently the most popular messenger app worldwide, offering businesses massive consumer reach. Hundreds of enterprise businesses are already using WhatsApp Business Messenger to their advantage.

The most effective strategy for integrating WhatsApp begins with having a fit for purpose customer engagement platform that will enable your team to scale, streamline and unify your WhatsApp messaging. Braze, one of the leading customer engagement and cross channel marketing platforms has recently launched full WhatsApp capabilities.

What makes Braze the ideal customer engagement platform to integrate your WhatsApp strategy? Braze unifies your channels and messaging, to streamline and scale two-way conversations and minimize additional technology or marketing costs. If you’re interested in learning more about how Braze can enable your team, be sure to read our blog post “Accelerating value realisation with CACI and Braze”.

At CACI, we are committed to helping businesses discover new and effective ways to connect with their customers. We are excited to see how Braze is enabling enterprise businesses to launch and optimise their WhatsApp programs both in terms of audience size and use cases. From resolving customer support issues to sending personalised marketing messages, let’s explore some WhatsApp business use cases below.

WhatsApp messaging is resolving customer queries while minimising additional support resources.

Imagine a customer in a different time zone with a question about their recent purchase delivery date. Instead of having to wait to speak with a live support agent, a WhatsApp chatbot can automatically retrieve the customer’s order number and provide them with their delivery details, saving the customer time and eliminating the expense of a live customer support agent.

Another example is travellers opting in to receive anything from their boarding pass to flight information, such as changes in schedule or boarding gate, last call before the plane door closes, or even the baggage delivery belt on arrival, all via WhatsApp.

Figure 1: WhatsApp Messages to Resolve Travel Customer Support Queries.

WhatsApp is also effective for driving deeper customer engagement and conversions.

Businesses often struggle with cart abandonment or a loyal customer suddenly disengaging. Sending a personalized WhatsApp message along with a promotional code can be a quick-and-easy way to bring a customer back. In fact, one report found that click-through rates for cart abandonment messages via WhatsApp performed over eleven times better than SMS (36% vs. 3.2%).

Additionally, WhatsApp’s ability to insert dynamic content and link directly to web pages allows businesses to send engaged customers informational messages about new products, restocked product availability, and other exclusive benefits. These actions can be significant revenue drivers for your business.

Figure 2: WhatsApp Messages to Drive Conversions.

Leveraging a new platform also comes with unique challenges.

While the examples above support a growing business case for WhatsApp messaging, leveraging a new platform also comes with a unique set of challenges. Whether it’s finding the right customer engagement platform, understanding the short- and long-term financial impact, or operational considerations like upskilling internal teams, these are all key factors to consider. Far too often, businesses rush into adopting a new platform or channel without fully considering the financial, organizational, or customer impact. Unplanned or poorly executed strategies can be detrimental, both in terms of cost and reputation management.

How CACI can help

At CACI, we encourage businesses considering a new platform or channel to begin by identifying the customer needs, followed by platform or channel relevance, and finally business impact. If your business is interested in learning more about WhatsApp messaging or a customer engagement platform like Braze, CACI’s technology, data, and CX capabilities can help. Contact us to learn more.

Understanding whether a loyalty programme is right for you

Posted on: 14 March 2023
Understanding whether a loyalty programme is right for you

How do you decide when to create a loyalty programme?

All businesses will eventually face the existential question of whether they should implement a loyalty programme or not. Understanding the value in doing so is paramount— customer loyalty is a big question for a lot of brands, and few know where to begin to devise a promising loyalty scheme, with many brands lacking an understanding of the potential return on investment. It is also integral for brands to have a business case prepared prior to formulating the loyalty programme’s design, as this knowledge will sway the development entirely.  

Why brands might be thinking of this now

There are several factors that may prompt the creation of a loyalty programme– increasing share of wallet, encouraging customers to buy directly from a brand versus through a third-party retailer, or enhancing direct customer relationships to drive repeat purchase behaviours. No matter what the driving forces, businesses have become increasingly aware of the impact that customer insight has on informing an effective loyalty programme and the potential cost and risk of not introducing one into your own business.

What risks are associated with creating a loyalty programme?

Improperly planned and executed loyalty programmes can result in hefty costs for businesses, plummeting bottom line profit figures and an inability for revenues to bounce back.

Additional elements you must consider when implementing a loyalty programme include:  

Getting the value exchange right

If customers do not understand the point or see the value behind your business’ programme, it will not be successful. Getting the value exchange wrong can erode your brand’s impression on customers. If the programme appears worthless as opposed to rewarding, it will fail to increase customers’ sentiment or engagement with your brand.

Getting the level of innovation right

Loyalty programmes must be innovative and uniquely tailored to a diverse customer base. Your business must meet customers’ expectations in one cohesive programme versus through multiple solutions, which demonstrates the importance of value exchange– meeting the wants of customers without sacrificing your business’ value.

Getting the loyalty mechanic right

You must be mindful of what customers are looking for from a loyalty programme, but this understanding must be backed by a data-driven approach that allows you to understand the unique selling point for your customers. There are a few approaches you can take:  

  • Tiered loyalty programme: This splits benefits into tiers or levels that customers spending certain amounts of money can achieve. The higher the tier a customer reaches, the greater the benefits will be.
  • Points-based loyalty programme: Customers are given points with every purchase they make, and when they reach a certain number of points, the points can be used towards a discount or reward.
  • Subscription-based loyalty programme: Customers that sign up for subscription-based loyalty programmes will pay for their subscription upfront or in monthly or yearly instalments to receive exclusive discounts or rewards.  

A lack of access to customer-centric data and an understanding of your customers’ wishes, however, will hinder a loyalty programme’s capabilities.

What should you consider before creating a loyalty programme?

  1. Is your business bought in, engaged and set up to support a loyalty programme? Do you have the right technology and CRM in place, an existing loyal customer base and the ability to continue to sign up new customers?  
  2. Is a loyalty programme worthwhile for your customers and for you? Have you listened to your customers’ value mindset in terms of the product or offering to conclude the best potential ROI from your loyalty programme? 
  3. Is your business clear on how to enter the market in a way that will demonstrate ROI? Does it have the necessary mechanics or programme in place to pilot in the market to provide a successful ROI? Are you aware of the potential opportunity it can bring?

If you can answer these three questions, you can conclude whether now is the time to create a loyalty programme.

What steps should your business take to implement a successful loyalty programme?

  1. Ensure your business is equipped with the necessary data to determine a loyalty programme’s value and discern what a good outcome for your business would be. This can be done through data analysis, best practices and benchmarking that will help you effectively align internally to understand existing capabilities and how best to proceed.
  2. Confirm that your customers want a loyalty programme. If they do, what does a valuable loyalty programme look like for them, and what is the opportunity for your business? Identifying the value to the customer as well as to your business through data enrichment and data science will be a key next step.
  3. Determine the ROI that your loyalty programme can deliver and understand what type of mechanic should be used in the pilot market to achieve this. An assessment of the scenarios of mechanics should be carried out to determine this. Once the opportunity from a viable mechanic is understood, determining how to effectively enter that market in a way that will deliver ROI will be crucial.

How can CACI support you with implementing a loyalty programme?

CACI’s data science capabilities and Customer Engagement consulting team can determine the actual costs that your business will face in running a successful loyalty programme and support your business through an innate understanding of loyalty across enterprises.

We do this by using our own proprietary data, data science, and expertise to understand the headroom in the market and help determine KPIs, understand which of your customers want a loyalty programme and how they want it to look to inform what potential opportunity exists. Areas that we assess to inform this include demographic richness, compliance for use, permissions, and our own products to fill any gaps around customer segmentation to determine who customers are and ask the right questions.

Our teams of data scientists and consultants will scenario plan with your business to comprehend the mechanics and experiences that must served and managed to your customer groups to build the pilot. Once this business case is understood, and a feasible pilot market has been identified, we can design a sophisticated end-to-end offering to help you deploy a successful loyalty programme.

Could your business benefit from a loyalty programme? To learn more about how CACI can help you, contact us here. 

The growth of online: a surprising pivot in 2023

Posted on: 13 February 2023
The growth of online: a surprising pivot in 2023

Over the last three years, we have seen a more significant shift in consumer habits than we could have imagined. Currently challenged by the rising cost of living and an economy in recession, the post-pandemic spending bubble was cut much shorter than initially anticipated by economists.

Like everyone in January, CACI reflected on the last few years, and as part of this, we revisited predictions that we made during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Consumer behaviour changed significantly in the space of several days, triggered by widespread temporary store closures during the lockdowns. Some stores were never able to reopen; whilst online platforms boomed, in light of these significant behavioural shifts, CACI rebuilt predictions to reflect this new normal.

How close were CACI’s consumer online spending predictions to actual results?

Mirroring our spend predictions, a phrase we maintained at CACI at the time was that “online spend jumped forwards five years in one month”. What we have come to realise was that three years on, these spend predictions, shown in the below chart, highlighting a return to in-store, were very close to the true picture.

How can CACI track consumer online spend behaviour?

CACI can unpick these new trends in spend behaviour using our new and exciting tool kit of Spend Dimensions and Brand Dimensions, which tracks over 200 shopping centres and 300 brands across the UK.

What we can see demonstrated in the above chart is a post-pandemic slump in online spend as a proportion of total spend. In 2023, online spend falls to 38%, before gradually rising again in the preceding years.

Whilst the current split in online and offline engagement provides us with an overall national average, it is important not to expect all shoppers to follow suit. We have seen asset type, product category, brand, region and demographics all play a big part in the extent to which a shopper might engage online.

Who is most likely to shop online?

Demographically, the split between those engaging in-store and online has become less distinct, highlighting the closing of the digital gap between young and old, with the difference between online market share across all groups dropping from 10% to 5% over the last year.

However, the big picture doesn’t change. Key online shoppers continue to be younger shoppers across the affluence spectrum as well as more affluent shoppers, likely driven by greater access to e-commerce platforms and the ability to afford delivery costs.

How does this vary by product category?

The recent shift back towards in-store engagement isn’t clear-cut and does vary by product category. CACI expectations were that the drivers of the overall return to the store would be clothing and footwear, household and health & wellness brands. This has been the general spend trend that we’ve been seeing across the UK since 2020.

The variation by category gets further exacerbated by the time of year. For example, comparing the months of October to December 2021 and 2022 in the chart below, there was a clear shift for household and kids’ goods spend to in-store, likely driven by the desire to experience before purchasing. Whereas, General Retail painted an interesting picture within the final quarter of 2022. Both in 2020 and 2021, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday taking place in November, Christmas hit online earlier than in-store, boosting online’s share of the market temporarily. In December, our Christmas survey reiterated this sentiment, with over half of those shopping online citing a main drive of this being concern with the rising cost of living and saving money, whereas over half of those shopping in-store did so for the experience. The experience-focused, in-store shoppers drove the resurgence year-on-year of in-store spend in December.

What does the return to in-store mean for retailers?

Across the 300 brands we tracked, many pure online brands are experiencing a decline in market share, in-store brands have typically performed well, and those blended brands have seen a shift towards a greater in-store market share. The power of the store can be seen through brands such as Decathlon, Nespresso, Build-A-Bear and Denby, who have all shifted to greater reliance on the store over the last quarter. In comparison, online disrupter brands such as Vinted and Shein which thrived through the year began to see a drop off.

What does the future of consumer online spending behaviours look like?

Whilst 2022 did represent a return to bricks and mortar, we are still at least a year ahead of where we would have been if the pandemic hadn’t happened. We expect to see continued growth in both on and offline retail spend, although proportionally online spend will increase.

 

However, it is undoubtedly true that we are currently, and will continue to, experience unexpected macroeconomic challenges which will impact different brands and destinations in different ways. Brands can no longer rely on their name as we have seen with the casualties of too many well-known landlords and retailers. Therefore, making informed decisions through the use of CACI data will help retain a competitive advantage and stand out from the market.

To learn more about how CACI can help your brand navigate changing consumer spending habits, get in touch with us here.

Elevating Customer Experience with High-Quality Data: The Power of DataHub

Posted on: 7 February 2023
Elevating Customer Experience with High-Quality Data: The Power of DataHub

“Garbage In, Garbage Out” (GIGO) is a well-known adage that holds true across various industries, including sports nutrition, education, wine making, data science, and, most notably, customer experience.

Poor-quality data can undermine confidence in reports and impede the implementation of personalisation and other data-driven initiatives.

At CACI, we are dedicated to harnessing the power of data to deliver remarkable results.

High-quality customer data is critical to this mission. Data that is accurate, consistent, and free from duplicates will enable us to optimise customer loyalty, personalisation, AI/ML, conversion optimization, and regulatory compliance.

To ensure that our data is of the highest quality, we adhere to the following criteria:

  • Demographically rich: The data provides insights into the customer’s identity and lifestyle.
  • Standardized: The data is consistent across systems, allowing for quick and efficient processing.
  • Veracity: The data adheres to your standards for validity and consistency.
  • Free of duplicates: The data is resolved at the individual level to avoid double counting and over-communication.
  • Consistent identifier: The customer is identified consistently, regardless of the source.
  • Predictive: The data contains variables that enable modelling and prediction of customer interests and needs.
  • Compliant: The data adheres to relevant consent and permissions standards.
  • Understood within the organization: The data is accessible and understandable to stakeholders.

To address these challenges, CACI has developed DataHub, a solution that solves data quality issues faced by brands. DataHub was built on the experience of working with leading brands in retail, publishing, financial services, gaming, and utilities.

It processes and enriches data in real-time using a scale on demand cloud native architecture, engineered to work with your data, wherever it is stored. For CACI clients already using Acorn, Ocean, and Fresco, DataHub provides dynamic, real-time enrichment of data, enabling real-time personalization and optimization of the digital or call center experience.

To learn more about DataHub and its flexible integration options for all use cases and enterprise architecture needs, download our short brochure or reach out to us for more information.

Let’s work towards a future where data quality is no longer a concern.

A Customer Personalisation Platform to deliver change for financial services brands

Posted on: 3 January 2023
A Customer Personalisation Platform to deliver change for financial services brands

Change within the financial services sector is complex. There are multiple stakeholders, regulatory needs, and often a base of legacy data and technology to unpick.  

From our work with major brands, we know that the change is achievable and worthwhile. Investing in customer centricity will pay dividends in the long-term by reducing competitive threats, winning new customers, and ensuring retention of base customers. 

To succeed in an increasingly competitive market, financial services brands need to establish change that encompasses: 

  1. A coherent data-driven strategy – where customer data is of a high quality and securely democratised to enable meaningful messaging to the individual 
  2. Establishing the right business targets and success measures – moving from short-term outcomes to long-term value for the customer and the organisation 
  3. A focus on your customers and the market context – understanding the needs and behaviours of both customers and prospects to better engage them 
  4. Maximising data and tech ROI – having the right tools to deliver the outcomes the business needs and then sweating the technology assets to deliver long-term ROI 
  5. Measure and optimise what matters – ensuring accurate reporting is fed through the business and that teams are empowered to act on those insights to optimise performance 

Our challenge to leaders within financial services is to create a vision and become an agent of change. We want to work with brands who care about their customers and are making changes to show it. Therefore, our catalogue of services is developed to do amazing things with data and connect your brand with the individual. 

At CACI, we can improve marketing ROI through detailed attribution modelling. Our customer demographics and bespoke segmentations provide a more accurate profile of customer needs, market size, and even financial vulnerability. Technical decisions around investment in AI, decisioning or identity resolution are made by defining clear use cases for technology and designing future technical architectures. 

This work led to CACI developing a framework for customer personalisation at scale. Working with leading vendors Tealium, Braze and Snowflake, we created a technology blueprint that can achieve full integration between enterprise data and the omnichannel experience. 

 

To find out more about the CACI Customer Personalisation Platform or to discuss issues related to customer transformation, please get in touch. 

You may also be interested in downloading this report which uncovers a surprising disconnect between what banks think and how customers feel about the customer experience, with statistics and insight gathered from 1,500 marketing leaders and 5,000 consumers. 

You can also check out the previous parts of this blog series below: 

Blog 1 – How the banking and financial services sector can lean into a changing market

Blog 2 – Creating human banking experiences through data-led marketing

Blog 3 – Three ways to stand out in a crowded insurance market

Blog 4 – Combining data and technology to deliver effective customer journeys in the financial services industry

Adopting a Customer-Centric approach: How truly valuable is it for both your business and your customers?

Posted on: 16 May 2022
Adopting a Customer-Centric approach: How truly valuable is it for both your business and your customers?

Brands are increasingly finding more ways of communicating to their customers by using extended methods of personalisation to grow customer retention and overall profit. The end-to-end process from learning and understanding your customers through to developing personalised communications is often complex, however adopting the right principles from the outset can ensure that the right steps are taken to achieving the wider goals of the business.

Understanding Your Customers

Understanding your customers commonly begins with an exercise in segmentation, allowing you to build a view of your customers’ interactions with your brand through the lenses of different audiences. A customer journey map then allows you to visualise each of these interactions in a linear journey to evaluate this view across several life stages and touchpoints.

  • What is the value added to your business?

By putting the customer at the heart of all decisions and communications and adopting a customer-centric approach, it will allow you to fully understand their behaviours, needs and expectations. The key value of a customer journey map is that it allows you to do this by considering all available data in context, rather than risking looking at information from fragmented sources in isolation. Being aware of these elements will enable you to create an end to end strategy based on a holistic data view.

Additionally, a customer journey map allows you to improve internal collaboration and alignment within your business amongst different departments (marketing, sales and operations). Together you will understand which activities to prioritise that make an impact on your business and your customers and will eventually cut counterproductive costs.

  • What is the value added for your customers?

The fundamental value it brings to your customers is that it leads to the creation of personalised experiences and in turn, customers will build more trust and gain a closer relationship to your business and your brand.

  • What happens if I ignore this step?

Failing in doing so will cause your brand to risk in sending communications to customers that are not reflective of the truth or their needs. It only takes one bad interaction with a customer to turn them towards competitors…

Talking to your Customers

A contact strategy is a visual representation of a planned communication strategy which creates a clear step by step plan of communication content, channels and time frequencies. It gives you the ability to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right audience across a range of different channels. Essentially, it translates aspirational customer journeys into actionable campaigns.

  • What is the value added to your business?

To achieve better outreach, repeated visits and overall customer advocacy, it is important to plan the content, frequency and channels that are most effective for a given audience. While it allows the planning of cross sell and upsell, it also allows the nurturing of new and current customers through automated and/or triggered campaigns tailored to each customer profile.

  • What is the value added to your customers?

Planning and organising the communication flow avoids overwhelming the customers with unnecessary communication as each message is triggered according to the client’s prior behaviours and preferences, at the right time and through the preferred channel.

  • What happens if I ignore this step?

Communicating without a contact strategy relies more on frequency than anything else. Bombarding customers with fragmented communications can in turn damage the ROI achieved from each campaign as well as generating low traffic to your platforms.

There is clear value in going through the necessary steps to understand and communicate with customers in the right way. At CACI, we specialise in taking clients through this journey and our team of consultants can help you build your own. If you’d like to schedule time with our marketing consultants to discuss how you can create a customer-centric marketing strategy, please get in touch.

Related Content

Discover more about how you can develop a customer-centric, personalised marketing experience in our recent whitepapers.