Foreword......3
Key fndings .4
About the research 5
Defning customer intimacy ..........6
Like neighbours: basic details and demographics ........7
Like friends: habits, preferences and emotional states .8
Like family: personal and intimate insight ..........9
Putting the data to use .......10
Informing real-time engagement.11
Creating a segment of one ...........13
Delivering real-time customer engagement ......15
Overcoming barriers to adoption 15
Seizing the GDPR opportunity .....16
Embracing analytics ...........17
Harnessing Artifcial Intelligence .17
Creating a central hub .......19
Why act now ..........20
About SAS ...21
Results by sector .....22
References ...27
Contents
Customer experience has
become an important focus
for brands. Those like First
Direct, John Lewis and Amazon
feature high up in KPMG’s
annual customer experience
excellence top 100 list,
which demonstrates that ’the
creation of positive memorable
experiences is becoming
the new battleground in
improving customer value’.1
In a hyper-connected, hyper-
competitive environment where
everything is reviewed online it is
becoming increasingly difcult to
compete on product or price alone.
The concept of customer experience
has become key as organisations fght
to remain relevant and deliver against
challenging customer expectations.
Customers want a seamless experience
regardless of how they engage with
you – whether it be online, via an
app, a call centre or in person; and
they expect the personal information
and data that they have made
available to be used appropriately
by organisations to deliver relevant
experiences. Against a backdrop of
political uncertainty and a precarious
economic recovery that is squeezing
household incomes, consumers are
scrutinising products, services and
companies. Those brands able to ofer
a better customer experience, through
an improved understanding of each
customer as an individual, are the ones
that will achieve growth.
While this may sound simple enough
in principle, most organisations are
only using a limited amount of data
to try to understand their customers.
In fact, most UK organisations admit
to using a fraction of the valuable
data available to them, and they will
often analyse it using basic tools or
spreadsheets that fail to provide a
single view of the customer.
What’s needed is an approach that
allows organisations to concentrate
on delivering a superior customer
experience, by achieving relevancy
at every touchpoint based on an
understanding of each individual
customer – a segment of one.
In the age of now, customers want the
call centre to know when they have just
been on the website. They want brands
to adjust their marketing strategies if
they’ve made a complaint or negatively
reviewed a product or service. This
means using data about what’s already
happened as well as what’s happening
now, to predict what’s going to happen
in the future, what the best outcomes
will be and make proftable and
accurate decisions at each point of a
customer interaction.
Organisations have huge amounts
of data at their fngertips that they
can use to predict and plan, to shape
products, services and messages.
However, there will be moments when
a decision needs to be made in real
time as to what the right content,
message, ofer or recommendation for
an individual customer might be. This
decision should not solely be based
on what area of a website a customer
clicked on, or whether they liked your
Facebook page.
Making accurate and proftable
decisions requires insight into ofine
and online historical data. This must be
combined with real-time context and
new types of data such as consumers’
emotions and feelings that will require
new methods of collection. Added
to this, organisations need a clear
understanding of business goals and
objectives, and clarity around the
predicted outcome of each possible
decision.
Businesses must move away from
a channel-specifc approach with
fragmented systems and rules, and
embrace a centralised analytical
decisioning capability – a ‘central
brain’. This would analyse all the data
available in a timely manner with
the ability to inject that insight into
any customer interaction across any
department and channel, in real time if
necessary.
Consumer organisations need access
to all relevant data, a centralised set
of logic and rules, and the ability to
automate complex analytical decisions
at scale and push those out to any
channel across any business unit at the
right time. The organisations that get
this right will be the ones that survive.
Tifany Carpenter, Head of
Customer Intelligence at SAS
UK & Ireland
ForewordKey fndings
SAS set out to understand
whether UK consumer
organisations recognise
the opportunity that real-
time customer engagement
brings, where they are
on that journey and what
the barriers might be
to creating successful
real-time interaction.
McKinsey says 61 per cent of consumers are more likely to buy from companies that
deliver custom content based on real-time interactions. The same report outlines
that successful projects to optimise customer experience typically achieve revenue
growth of fve to 10 per cent and cost reductions of 15 to 25 per cent within just two
or three years2.
Our research confrmed that UK businesses see the opportunity. Over half of all
organisations said that as a result of improved real-time customer engagement,
they would expect revenues to increase by at least 10 per cent. One in fve expects
revenues could even jump by as much as 20–40 per cent.
There are a few ‘leader’ organisations delivering successful real-time engagement,
creating personalised experiences for consumers, driving expectations and
changing the dynamics of the market. There are also companies being left behind.
Organisations with the ability to capture more information and use this to make
appropriate decisions in real time to personalise customer interactions are not
always doing so, despite recognising these high potential returns.
The gap is set to widen: those organisations investing in real-time capabilities now
have the ability to respond and adjust their approach to meet changing expectations
and circumstances, ensuring they remain agile and win over more customers in
the process. Most surprisingly, the research shows that for nearly half of companies
(47 per cent), barriers to optimising successful real-time customer experience are
not necessarily fnancial. With signifcant potential for revenue increases, what is
stopping UK organisations prioritising real-time customer engagement While
eight in 10 organisations claim to use artifcial intelligence, how many are harnessing
it to deliver true real-time capabilities
Reasons for the existence of a gap between capability and execution of real-time
interaction are explored in more detail in this report. Whether the barriers to success
are operational, regulatory or indeed budgetary, failure to align behind real-time
customer engagement now means loss of opportunity and revenue share in a rapidly
evolving market.。