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The One to One Enterprise Depends on
High Impact Customer Interaction

 © Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., July 1998

One of the most significant challenges facing the aspiring enterprise is identifying means of enhancing dialogue with its customers. In order to build lasting and profitable customer relationships, companies must interact with and learn from their customers. Too often, though, companies are handling this task poorly. They haven’t figured out how to capitalize on the powerful tools that are now available to them. But that is starting to change.

Personalized Human Assistance via the Web

Take American Finance and Investment, Inc. (AFI), a top provider of Web-based mortgages. It has discovered a new way to enhance call center interactions with its customers. AFI offers its customers an efficient and cost-effective means of shopping for a mortgage loan, but recognizes that human interaction is still critical to a final decision for most people. It now offers its customers an immediate phone connection – at the moment of need – and an opportunity to see personalized, visual, explanatory materials on the Web as the conversation takes place.

Using “teleweb” technology from Webline Communications, AFI enables its customers to hit a “callback” button on the Web site to request immediate human assistance. Instead of just putting marketing materials up on the Web (or mailing them out, as traditional competitors do), AFI can engage the customer in a conversation that includes the online exchange of files and Web content. This enables the customer representative to explain the company’s products and terms in a powerful way, leading the customer to materials of particular relevance.

Reps can also demonstrate various loan options by sharing real-time calculations of different mortgage loans that reflect the customer’s own needs and credit rating. “We think it has done a fantastic job of helping us market directly to our customers,” Jack Rodgers, president of AFI, told us. “We can make contact at a critical time in the sales cycle, and close the sale.”

Dynamic and Personalised Calling Scripts

Another interesting provider of interaction enhancement capabilities is Sky Alland Marketing. It has developed a capability called “Smart Talk.” It stems from the premise that good dialogue is good marketing. At the heart of Smart Talk is good database management, because the technique won’t work unless you can readily “infuse” your calling script with relevant, personal customer data. In a Smart Talk scenario, information captured during previous contacts with the customer is fed into the calling script, creating the potential for a true one-to-one dialogue. Sky Alland relies on Smart Talk to build customer relationships for clients such as Porsche, Mitsubishi and Owens Corning.

In the case of Mitsubishi, Sky Alland captures customer phone contacts verbatim, yielding a treasure-trove of information that can be passed along to a local dealer or worked into the script of a future outbound call. Smart Talk empowers the caller to engage in a personal, intelligent conversation with customers about their specific concerns. For example, if a Sky Alland customer representative makes a call to determine if the customer is satisfied with the way the car was sold and delivered, and finds during the course of the call that the sun roof isn’t working properly, that information is conveyed to the dealership so the problem can be fixed.

Unable to Differentiate Callers

For many companies, however, the reliance on legacy systems and the lack of a centralized customer database remain major obstacles. And the problem is not limited to outbound calling situations. Operators at some of the nation’s largest inbound customer service centers, for example, have no way of telling whether a caller is a high-value or a low-value customer because they can’t access sales history data. “You can’t tell the difference between a customer who has bought $100,000 worth of merchandise over the past ten years and a kid who’s looking for a free catalog,” says Sky Alland’s Michael W. Johnson.

As these examples demonstrate, there is no shortage of innovative efforts now underway to address the need for high-impact interaction. The one-to-one enterprise recognizes that such solutions are critical to its success. They are central to any effort to establish lasting, one-to-one relationships.

About the Authors

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., co-authored Enterprise One to One: Tools for Competing in the Interactive Age (Currency/Doubleday, 1997) and The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time (Currency/Doubleday, 1993).

Their newest book, co-authored with Bob Dorf, is entitled:  The One to One Fieldbook:  The Complete Toolkit for Implementing a 1to1 Marketing Program and is due to be published in the United States in late 1998. 

Their consulting firm, Marketing1to1/Peppers and Rogers Group is based in Stamford, CT, USA. To receive their free weekly email newsletter, INSIDE 1to1, visit their Web site or send a message.

Book Reviews

Enterprise One to One book review
The One to One Future book review