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The Communications Cycle applies not only during Acquisition but also during Service, and Disposal. Every customer encounter, whether by machine or with a company representative is an opportunity to get to know ones customers, to understand their needs, and if appropriate, offer value added information or make a sales proposition.
The stages within the Communications Cycle are:
Your first action is to identify and then target the customers that are relevant to the Customer Relationship Life Cycle stage that you have chosen. If you have chosen the Mass Information or Mass Presentation stages then you need to identify those customers who are price sensitive and rather homogeneous in their needs. On the other hand, if you intend to offer Mass Personalisation and Mass Customisation, then you need to identify those customers who have differentiated needs and are prepared to pay a premium for those needs to be met. Remember, that though the product may be the same, different customers will probably have different needs and will value those needs - even the same need - differently.
This differentiation and selection is at the heart of
One to One Marketing. For more specific
information, follow the links to learn more about
Customer
Valuation
(including Life Time Value) and the
Customer Differentiation
Matrix.
There are other customer factors that need to be taken into account for customer
selection:
is now being employed.
Note that product relevance (e.g. do Eskimos actually need refrigerators!) is taken as given.
To make your customer selection requires suitable customer data that will
come from a number of sources including:
These sources represent a spectrum of value (from most to least), particularly for the latter stages of the Customer Relationship Life Cycle. As you undertake more and more communications then you will acquire greater value added data (see below). Note that there are many less formal ways to capture personal needs. For example, every customer encounter should be seen as an opportunity to learn more about your customers, and every complaint or compliment is another.
Remember to ensure that the Data Protection Principles and the relevant Registrations are adhered to.
Enticing Customers
Simply implementing an Internet Web site or providing a delivery medium will not guarantee any customers. They need to be enticed with value added information that ideally is personalised to their particular needs.
Value Added information will not necessarily be directly related to your product or service. It could be related to your customer's (or target customer's) interests. An example of this is the Nationwide Building Society. It has a web site with comprehensive information about the UK football league. The view on the right is part of their home page. Click the image to see the complete home page (63K). Providing such information is likely to raise your esteem in your customer's eyes and to make them more relaxed and open to suggestions when they visit your web site or next make contact.
Value Added information will not necessarily be provided by yourselves. You
can links out to other sources and with a Web site it is possible using frames
to incorporate that other information into your own site so as to avoid customers
"wandering off". (Note: there are copyright implications with this, so it
is best to get the permission with the other information owners). These other
sources of information could come from:
Information should of course be checked for accuracy, timeliness, relevance, bias, inflammatory or libellous content, etc..
The most powerful form of Value Added is information that is personally relevant to each customer. This could be achieved by identifying and selecting from the larger pool of general value added information. There are basically two methods of doing this:
for more details.
For example, Nationwide could provide each customer or prospect information about their favourite teams. Then whenever they visit the Nationwide web site they will have that information displayed immediately.
Other examples of both general value added and personalised information are given under each stage of the Customer Relationship Cycle:
Mass Information, Mass Presentation, Mass Personalisation and Mass Customisation
as well as in the comprehensive Database of example companies.
Once you have created the Value Added data, and hopefully personalised it,
then customers need to be directed to your site. For
general value added information this can be done by using other
media and mediums to advertise your presence and they include:
Use of e-mail, banner ads
and out-bound tele-marketing is becoming less effective as consumers block
these communications. Many consumers are switching to a
Pull mode whereby they subscribe to the
Internet Broadcast Channels on particular subjects and then the information
is download to their PC at regular intervals or continuously as it changes.
I.e. consumers pull in the information that they want. This is strangely
refered to as a Push mode, i.e. as seen from the provider's perspective.
It is possible to advertise on these channels with your advert targetted to consumers choosing particular subjects. For example, consumers on Pointcast (see right) choosing Financial Information see video adverts for Fidelity Investments (top right of screen shot). Click the image to see an enlarged version (100K).
For personalised information, then more
of the one-to-one forms of communications need to be employed:
The choice of medium depends on customer's preferences (see below) and this will then determine other factors such as the format of the information. Follow the link for more information on the various interactive mediums.
It is critical that all the mediums employed, including the traditional ones of direct response, letters, posters, etc., work together in a co-ordinating and reinforcing manner. This requires that all promotional activities and administrative correspondence are under the direction of marketing.
For an illustration of personalising messages and directing customers see Changing Pull into Directed using Web Genetics (7 slides).
Besides the customer's preferences concerning value added
information, other variables need to be taken into consideration when delivering
information:
then follow the link.
This is the most crucial stage in the Communications Cycle. First impressions count and so do second and third impressions! When customers arrive they at your site, or make contact via one of the other interactive mediums, they have preconceived expectations that have been shaped by the previous stages, particularly the Enticing Customers stage.
Customers first need reassuring that they have come to the right place. If
you have many marketing campaigns aimed at different market segments, then
it is best to direct these different groups to different web pages or to
different telephone numbers. Having a single home page may satisfy none of
your customers. It will be either very bland or very confusing with
lots of options. Having different contact points allows you not only to have
different and relevant content, but also allows
different styles, and user
dialogues and allows you to
address different
behaviours. Different contact points also allows you to
more easily measure the response rate. If you are engaging in
Mass Personalisation or Mass
Customisation and using the Internet, then each customer will have their
own personalised web page (in reality these pages will be generated on demand
- see the Changing Pull into Directed
using Web Genetics
illustration
).
The next step is reassuring customers that their expectations are likely
to be satisfied. They need time to browse and make their initial assessment
before you start bombarding them with questions. Can you answer their likely
questions:
Hopefully, customers will see a site that exceeds their expectations and
will be inclined to bookmark your page and return later. Each subsequent
visit should be noted and gradually customers
should be encouraged to "open-up" and divulge more personal information about
themselves. To do this you will need to reassure
them on a number of points:
.
The positive points can also be highlighted of divulging information :
On way to encourage repeat visits is to provide ways for your customers to
interact. You need to provide information and facilities
of a dynamic nature, such as:
Choice of communications medium will depend on customer's preferences. As each individual customer gains confidence so you can ask more personal and more intimate questions, such as questions about dreams and worries (see below). All this means recording access and feedback and then personalising further interactions.
Each stage in the Acquisition Cycle could be conducted in a single interaction but is more likely to be conducted over an extended period of time. This is particularly true for those products that have on-going servicing, such as investment portfolio management, as well as for the more complex products with considered decisions, such as acquiring a mortgage. In the latter case there will be multiple invocations of the Communications Cycle, and within the cycle each stage may well have multiple interactions. For example, to entice the customer it may take a number of communications before the "hot button" is hit. There is a need therefore to maintain information between sessions (in fact even within the same session, because most of the interactive mediums today do not remember information from one message transmission to the next).
But information recording is more than just noting the input data. It is
recording information that over time will build a comprehensive and valuable
customer profile of:
This requires enabling technology to record, analyse and respond in a dynamic
fashion. One such product is One-To-One from BroadVision, that
uses business rules defined by marketeers. For example:
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Follow the SIM links to read more about the Rule
Based
Approach, Rule Based
Systems
or BroadVision's
One-To-One
product, or use the following link to go direct to
BroadVision's own site.
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JS
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