Increasing Profitability through Intelligent Interactions: Innovative Marketing Strategies in the Communications Industry An Epiphany Business White Paper
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Increasing Profitability through Intelligent Interactions:Innovative Marketing Strategies in the Communications Industry
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It is a turbulent time for the communications
industry, but also a time of great transition. While
some companies in the sector are merely
struggling to survive, others are rethinking theirbusiness strategies and redesigning their
marketing practices to build more profitable,
enduring relationships with their best customers.
The leading edge companies are seeking new
ways to set themselves apart from their less-savvy
competitors and thrive in the coming years.
Successful communications marketers are now
moving beyond the traditional practice of
outbound marketing and are taking the steps
necessary to drive new revenue through cross-
selling and up-selling. They are also addressing
the increasing challenge of customer churn,
which represents a major threat to all companies
in the industry. These strategic players have
stepped off the endless treadmill of customer
attrition and acquisition. Rather than devoting
all their resources to customer acquisition
programs, they are investing in programs that
increase the loyalty and profitability of their
existing customers. At the same time, they are
leveraging their existing call center and web-
based infrastructures to manage customer-
driven interactions with increasing skill and
precision. All of these strategic investments are
paying off in both increased profits and
customer satisfaction.
As the diminishing returns associated with
outbound, acquisition-focused marketing initiatives
become even more apparent, leading companies
are placing much more emphasis on inbound
marketing and intelligent customer interactions as
the means for building powerful customer
relationships that boost profitable growth.
COMMUNICATIONS IN TRANSITION
Business headlines today tend to emphasize the
current troubles faced by communicationscompanies in transition. The challenge for
communications firms lies in building the
foundation for enduring growth and profitability,
while also focusing on the bottom line. With this
in mind, many of these companies are
increasingly concentrating on the value of
individual customers. As marketers in the
communications industry are beginning to
realize, tools that facilitate effective cross-
selling, up-selling, and customer retention are
essential to meeting this objective.
In North America, diversified operators are now
cross-selling and up-selling local service, long-
distance, wireless, and data products to their
existing customers. Wireless operators areintensely focused on increasing their average
revenue per user (ARPU) by up-selling plans
that include more minutes, cross-selling wireless
data services, and extending existing contracts.
And in Europe, operators are focused on serving
pre-paid customers more effectively, migrating
high-value pre-paid customers to post-paid
plans, and finding opportunities to cross-sell
new and innovative wireless data services.
While concentrating their efforts on boosting
existing customer value, many communications
companies throughout the world-both wireless
and wireline operators-are also focused on
reducing customer churn. Annual churn rates in
consumer wireline and wireless segments have
reached as high as 40% and 50%, respectively,
and these high customer churn rates can lead to
lost profits, high customer acquisition costs, and
lower profit per customer. Based on customer
acquisition expenditures alone, replacing lost
customers costs the communications industry
billions of dollars annually.
For wireline operators, competitors are coming
from all angles to replace both primary voice and
secondary Internet access lines. Cable (MSO)operators are heavily promoting their broadband
Internet and voice-over-IP services in an effort to
be the consumer's single source for
communications and cable television services.
That translates into households potentially
relinquishing their traditional telephone lines in
exchange for high-speed cable access.
Moreover, wireless operators are having
increasing success as the primary
communications provider to youth markets, the
engine of growth for any communications
business. Today, 5% of US households use awireless phone exclusively, and that percentage
continues to increase, further eroding traditional
wireline businesses. Yet, wireless operators
themselves face extremely strong competition
to retain customers, from within the wireless
market itself.
Given the relentless change and competition in
the marketplace, savvy marketers have
recognized that their strategic opportunity lies
in creating something that will endure: solid,
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profitable and loyal customer relationships. But
to win in the high-stakes communications game,
marketers must do things that set them apart
from the competition.
INBOUND MARKETING DRIVES
INTELLIGENT INTERACTIONS
Marketing in the communications sector has
traditionally been an outbound effort using
direct mail, telemarketing, and e-mail. However,
outbound market ing has become an
increasingly difficult and expensive endeavor in
recent years. Government regulations, consumer
backlash, and dwindling response rates have all
diminished the role of outbound campaigns
within the overall marketing mix.
The relative decline in outbound marketing is
part of a fundamental marketing transformation
that is taking place in the communications
industry. This shift represents an ascendance of
inbound marketing, which revolves around
"inbound" customer touchpoints such as the
web and the call center. Considering that
communications companies have made
tremendous investments in these forms of
infrastructure over the years, this shift
represents a vast opportunity to leverage and
maximize the value of existing assets. Strategic
marketers are recognizing that incrementalinvestments in customer interaction capabilities
can help them extend the power of their existing
infrastructures to manage customers in
powerful and profitable new ways.
For consumer-oriented companies, the inbound
channel is a golden opportunity to build and
capitalize on the customer relationship. Unlike
outbound interruptions, inbound interactions
represent a time when companies have the
customer's time and attention, and are more
likely to receive permission to cross-sell a
product or deliver a marketing message.
The real-time nature of the inbound interaction
also creates opportunities. It is a chance to
address the customer on a personal basis,
presenting relevant messages and offers that
reflect the most up-to-date needs, preferences
and priorities of that customer. For example,
imagine a wireless consumer that has had a
significant number of dropped calls during a 24-
hour period. By leveraging the real-time nature
of the interaction, the company can offer this
customer a retention offer to show how much
they value the customer, as opposed to an
inappropriate up-sell or cross-sell offer.
Sophisticated marketers are deploying inbound
marketing strategies to generate offers that are
based on customer profiles, transaction histories
and other forms of real-time information. In the
process, they generate the right offer for the right
customer at the right time. The relevance of this
personalized customer care helps to ensure that
these businesses realize optimal results.
UNMET POTENTIAL
Yet, for all the opportunities to complement
outbound marketing and elevate customer
value, most inbound marketing solutions today
fall far short of their potential. Many
communications companies continue to rely on
inefficient and ineffective approaches to
managing inbound customer interactions. For
instance, it is still common to find inbound
marketing represented by an "offers of the
week" sheet—a static list of marketing offers
delivered by customer service agents who must
rely on training and experience to decide, caller
by caller, which offers to make. In addition,
automated, rules-based customer interaction
systems are delivering disappointing results as
well. Rules simply cannot account for thethousands of customer scenarios likely to be
encountered, and result in inflexible, time
consuming, error prone systems and ineffective
marketing programs. Finally, some companies
have started using analytics to decide which
marketing offer or message to present.
However, most analytic solutions rely on off-line
batch or periodic data feeds and do not take the
real-time or near-term context of the customer
interaction into account.
Listed below are a few of the limitations of rules-
based and off-line approaches to inbound marketing:
• Rules are Hard to Get Right. Rules-based sys-
tems place the burden on marketers to
account for and manage every customer inter-
action situation that might arise. It is virtually
impossible, however, to create and maintain a
full set of rules that will take into account
every permutation of customer segment, cam-
paign, offer, and interaction scenario.
• Rules are Difficult to Maintain. Inbound mar-
keting solutions based on a rules-based
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methodology ultimately require more time
and attention to build and maintain. As the
number of rules grows, it becomes increas-
ingly important to be able to test in advancethe impact of adding new rules.
• Rules are Hard to Measure. Since rules lack
analytics, they provide no insight about the
customer behaviors and attributes that drive
certain actions, such as why customers react
favorably to certain messages more frequently
than others. Thus, it is often difficult to know
when (or how) the rules should be changed to
reflect changing market conditions.
• Off-Line Prediction is "Too Late". Another
non-optimal approach leverages off-line ana-
lytics to predict which messages will be best
suited for each customer during the next
interaction. This batch analysis is less effec-
tive than a true real-time approach since it
takes place prior to the interaction and can-
not take information about the interaction
itself into account. In addition, batch systems
require manual analysis of results and period-
ic re-deployment of new models, both of
which require more resources and lead to
lost opportunities.
• Off-line Models Require Historical Data.
Off-line models usually require extensive his-
torical data before they can be used for
predictions, making it difficult to draw con-
clusions about offer success for a significantperiod of time. The result is fairly static
inbound marketing programs that are unable
to quickly adjust to changing market condi-
tions, new offers, or new customers.
BEST PRACTICES IN INBOUND MARKETING
Successful marketers in the communications
industry are focused on building relationships
with their best customers. They look for
products for their customers as opposed to
customers for their products. And they know
that it is five to seven times more expensive toacquire a new customer than it is to cultivate an
existing one.
These marketers have also become increasingly
strategic about how they manage inbound,
customer-driven interactions. Whereas many
companies might treat inbound interactions—
particularly complaints or threats of service
termination—as a nuisance, these marketers see
them as a prime opportunity to defend, develop
or deepen a relationship.
Some of the key strategies and practices that
are driving their success include:
Driving Intelligent Interactions.Customers today have unique needs,
preferences and priorities. Depending on a
customer's particular circumstances, they are
likely to respond to offers and messages in
different ways. Because of this, every customer
interaction is an opportunity to strengthen the
relationship. Rather than risk losing a customer
or an opportunity by presenting impersonal
messages and offers, leading companies are
focused on personalizing each interaction based
on real-time customer information and
intelligence.
These customer-focused enterprises rely on
real-time, self-learning analytics to discover the
patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed—
and then take immediate action based on those
insights. World-class analytical tools now enable
them to determine which campaigns, offers and
messages have the highest statistical chance of
success with a particular customer, at the
moment of contact. These firms are able to
leverage real-time, behavioral and historical
information to determine how best to manage
each individual customer interaction.
Real-time, predictive analytics are the best way todecide the messages that are most appropriate for
the customer. These analytics drive personalized
recommendations, offers and messages based on
predictive models running in the background. They
also allow innovative companies to experiment and
test new ideas on a subset of their customers, and
then rapidly leverage new insights across the rest
of their customer base.
Accounting for Business Objectives
In order for an inbound marketing interaction is
to be optimal, it must not only address the
particular needs and concerns of the customerbut also meet the business goals of the
organization. In other words, companies must
ensure that they are making offers that
are carefully aligned with their immediate
and longer-term objectives, whether those
objectives revolve around growth, profitability
or customer retention.
To meet these objectives, so phist icated
marketers are now adopting offer arbitration for
inbound interactions. This approach ensures
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that the optimal message is chosen from an
array of possible messages. For instance, a
communications company with a high churn
rate may decide to prioritize retention offersabove all other presentations. Alternatively,
within a cross-sell campaign, bundles may be
given highest priority, with the individual bundle
offers sorted by the expected value of an
accepted offer.
In almost all situations, different messages with
different purposes that target the same people
will compete for a critical resource: the
customer's attention. When these messages
compete, offer arbitration can weigh the value
of each offer along with the customer's
likelihood of acceptance, ensuring that the final
message balances the customer's need for
relevant offers with the company's objective to
increase profitability.
Building Real-Time Customer Profiles
Today's successful marketers build their programs
around individual customer profiles, focusing
their attention on the customers that retain the
highest value. This practice is based on the
fundamental realization that marketing to the
average customer will achieve no more than the
average customer's value. Yet, today it is still
common in the communications industry to find
campaigns based on simplistic, one-size-fits-allapproaches. Smart marketers have taken the first
step towards improved results by using individual
customer data to select appropriate offers.
To grow marketing revenues beyond average,
best practice companies rely on individual
customer profile data and analytics to improve
performance and drive true customer
intelligence. Marketers have achieved significant
gains using customer profile data such as
tenure, product usage, ARPU, billing data, credit
status, contextual data and demographic data.
The more sophisticated this customerintelligence-and the more actively it is
leveraged-the more effectively companies can
manage and strengthen relationships. In fact,
marketers that convert to real-time, individual
customer profiles often experience double-digit
gains in offer acceptances, as compared to
untargeted, average customer approaches.
However, for customer profiles to be effective, it
is critical that the profiles be up-to-date and
accessible in real time. It is estimated that this
real-time context can provided 40-50% of the
predictive power of analytic models. Through a
sub-second assessment of the context of the
current customer interaction (e.g., servicerequest, billing question, complaint, service
termination, etc.), and other very recent
interactions (e.g., transactions, calls, website
visits, etc.), these systems can generate relevant,
personalized recommendations with much
higher precision than non-real-time systems.
Enabling and Encouraging Collaboration
Today's leading communications companies
are strengthening the connections between
marketing and customer interaction channels, as
well as between departments and divisions. While
in the past many marketing departments and
customer service organizations have worked in
isolation, today's consumer oriented companies
are finding that success lies in ensuring cross-
organization alignment of all marketing and
service objectives, actions and processes.
To maximize the value of customer relationships,
it is critical that communications companies
speak with a single voice to their customers and
have access to all previous interactions. For
example, the wireless product group should
have access to and leverage information about
customers using high-speed data services. By
collaborating across business units anddepartments, communications companies are
able to share information more effectively and
ensure customers are managed in a consistent
fashion. Collaboration also avoids depleting
customer attention by coordinating and
proactively limiting the number of customer
contacts made.
Successful companies have now bridged the
gap between marketing and customer care, so
that the organization that designs campaigns
works closely with the organization that
manages customer interactions. By closingthis gap, companies ensure greater success
in marketing campaigns, more accurate
measurement of campaign results, and more
rapid adaptation to changes in the marketplace.
In addition, close collaboration between these
groups ensures higher customer satisfaction.
Measuring and Refining for Results
It is vital to measure and refine one's marketing
campaigns to match market trends and to
improve business performance. Only in this way
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can companies set and meet marketing
objectives of the highest order. The ability to
learn continually from the market and then act
on the intelligence that has been gathered is ahallmark of a dynamic, agile, modern enterprise.
Equally important, these highly measurable
approaches have made it possible for front-line
marketers to demonstrate improved results to
management and thereby secure ongoing
support for their programs.
Compared to the old "spray and pray" approach,
today's closed-loop systems leverage analysis of
observed customer data generated through
actual campaigns to determine the most
effective tactic for achieving the desired result.
Campaigns can be designed, tested against
control groups, and then rolled out more
broadly. In this way, campaigns start small, and
then are promoted to the broader customer
base once refined and proven effective. With
this feedback loop in place, campaigns become
better targeted, more frequently updated and
ultimately more effective.
Closed loop approaches typically spark a move
towards more flexible and focused marketing. For
example, a diversified operator may want to cross-
sell the same DSL Internet package using multiple
messages, each targeted at a particular customer
segment (e.g., SOHO businesses, high-incomehouseholds, etc). Alternatively, a wireless operator
might decide to promote each of its various
wireless data applications (e.g., SMS, news, sports,
weather, ring tones, e-mail, games) using
messages specific to the customer segments it is
trying to reach. By measuring and tracking the
results of these personalized approaches,
companies are able to continuously sharpen their
segmentation and message targeting.
BOTTOM-LINE BENEFITS
As leading consumer-oriented companies in thecommunications sector have learned and
demonstrated, strategic approaches to inbound
marketing and customer interaction
management can significantly boost individual
customer value, revenues and profitability.
Drawing on the real-world experiences of several
top communications companies, it is clear these
firms have generated substantial ROI from both
retention and cross-sell programs. Listed here are
just a few of those real-world scenarios:
Retention ROI Scenario
Customer retention has become a high priority
in the communications industry in recent years.
As markets have matured, churn has becomemore pervasive, and customer growth has
slowed. Because of these forces, significant
benefits are being generated by focusing on
retaining existing customers.
Projecting the hard dollar savings yielded by
a best practice retention program requires
specific information. Here are a few
simple assumptions:
• Number of customers. Assume this operator
has a total of 3 million subscribers.
• Expected decrease in churn as a result of
implementing a successful program. Even
incremental improvements in churn can have
dramatic economic impacts. Conservatively
assume a 0.1% reduction in churn rates.
• Cost to acquire a new customer. A general
rule of thumb is $250-$300 for the commu-
nications industry.
• Cost to retain an existing customer. A gener-
al rule of thumb is that it costs 5 times as
much to acquire a new customer than to
keep an existing customer. Assume $50 to
retain an existing customer.
Using a conservative 0.1% reduction in churn, asuccessful program would yield $600,000 in
saved customer acquisition costs. Note that this
calculation includes only the cost of acquiring a
new customer, and does not include the fact
that loyal customers have significantly higher
revenue and profitability than new customers.
SAMPLE CALCULATION
Total Customers 3M
% Incremental Churn Reduction 0.1%
Retained Customers 3,000
Incremental Cost Savings Per Customer
(Acquisition cost $250 less cost of retention $50) $200Saved Acquisition Costs $600,000
Cross-Sell / Up-Sell Benefit Scenario
Still another powerful aspect of an inbound
marketing program is the capacity to generate
increased revenue and profit through cross-
selling or up-selling efforts to an existing
customer base. Beyond simply addressing a
service issue or a customer request, inbound
marketing capabilities enable a company to
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present a relevant offer that matches an
individual customer's needs and interests.
Through this process, customer interactionsbecome increasingly valuable and important
opportunities that can contribute mightily to
customer loyalty, profitability, and overall growth.
Projecting the incremental gross profit yielded by
an inbound cross-sell / up-sell program requires
specific information. Here are a few assumptions:
• Annual inbound customer interactions. In the
communications industry, the vast majority of
inbound contacts occur in the call center. For
this scenario, assume there are 9 million
inbound call center interactions per year.
• Percentage of interactions eligible for cross-
sell. Not all inbound interactions will be eligible
for a marketing offer because customers
should not be cross-sold during certain situa-
tions (e.g., dispute resolution, cancellation).
Assume that 25% of interactions are eligible for
cross-selling or up-selling.
• Expected offer acceptance rates. Offer accept-
ance rates can vary widely and rely heavily on
the marketer's ability to create compelling
campaigns and offers. Assume an extremely
conservative 1% higher offer acceptance rate
(this can be the improvement over and above
an existing cross-sell program or the rate ofbrand new cross-sell program).
• Expected incremental value generated from
a cross-sell offer. Assume that, when accept-
ed, the cross-sell offer being promoted
generates $50 in immediate incremental rev-
enue and has a 60% gross profit margin.
Below is a sample calculation showing the first
year ROI impacts of cross-selling in the call
center. Each 1% increase in offer acceptance
rates yields $675,000 of annual incremental
gross profit.
SAMPLE CALCULATION Contact Center
Annual Inbound Interactions 9M
% Interactions Eligible for Cross-Sell 25%
# Interactions Eligible for Cross-Sell 2.25M
Increase in Offer Acceptance Rate 1%
Incremental Offers Accepted 22,500
Expected Revenue Per Offer $50
Incremental Revenue $1,125,000
Gross Profit Margin 60%
Incremental Gross Profit $675,000
Bundling Penetration Benefit
Successful cross-selling of bundles can provide
even greater lift to customer value-by
simultaneously reducing churn, generating newrevenue, and increasing loyalty. Customers who
purchase bundles spend between 7 percent and
15 percent more than other customers. This
benefit is additive to the initial gain from cross-
selling a bundled offer.
A successful marketing program in the
communications industry would likely select the
best bundled offers and prioritize them over
other offers, driving bundling strategies to the
front of inbound marketing efforts. As a result,
this program could increase bundling penetration
and improve individual customer spend.
Projecting the incremental gross profit yielded
by a bundling program requires specific
information. Here are a few assumptions:
• Number of customers. Assume this operator
has a total of 3 million subscribers.
• % incremental increase in bundle penetration.
Assume a 0.5% increase in bundle penetration.
• Expected incremental value generated from
a bundle offer. Assume that bundles drive
$50 of annual incremental revenue and have
a 60% gross profit margin.
SAMPLE CALCULATION
Customers 3M
% Incremental Increase in Bundle Penetration 0.5%
Incremental Bundle Penetration 15,000
Annual Incremental Revenue Per
Customer Owning a Bundle $50
Annual Incremental Revenue $750,000
Gross Profit Margin 60%
Incremental Gross Profit $450,000
As the above scenarios suggest, the payoffs
associated with embracing a dynamic,intelligent approach to inbound marketing are
demonstrably real. Through customer retention,
cross-selling and bundling programs, inbound
marketing provides an opportunity to maximize
the value of each customer relationship while
leveraging existing investments in call center
and web infrastructure.
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EPIPHANY'S INTERACTION ADVISOR FOR
TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Recognizing the challenges and opportunities thatcompanies in the communications industry now
face, Epiphany has developed a powerful inbound
marketing solution for today's leading enterprises.
Epiphany Interaction Advisor for Communications
is a multi-channel inbound marketing application
built specifically for the communications industry.
It utilizes customer data from across the entire
enterprise to deliver intelligent interactions
to all touchpoints in real time.
As part of the Epiphany Advisor family of
solutions, Interaction Advisor can be easily
integrated with existing applications to drive
immediate revenue out of each customer
interaction. Controlled by a marketing
professional through an intuitive Web-based
inter face , the app l icat ion prov ides a
framework for creating, executing, modifying,
a n d m o n i t o r i n g i n b o u n d m a r k e t i n g
campaigns. The communications solution
includes a number of industry best practices,
including data models, business processes,
and marketing templates.
With top customers globally, Epiphany
Interaction Advisor for Communications is an
established leader and delivers proven businessresults. Our customers include:
• 2 of 4 Largest Regional Bell Operating
Companies (RBOCs) in North America
• 2 of Top 3 European Telecom Companies
• 3 of the Top 7 Wireless providers worldwide
INTERACTION ADVISOR DELIVERS KEY
BUSINESS BENEFITS FOR COMMUNICATIONS
COMPANIES.
Retain Your Most Valuable Customers
Epiphany Interaction Advisor recommends theoptimal retention offer for each customer,
matching the value of the offer to the value the
customer brings to the enterprise. Because it
works in real time, the solution can be used as
part of an ongoing loyalty campaign or to
recommend an immediate action to retain a
customer who demonstrates an intention to
defect. As a result, companies that use
Epiphany Interaction Advisor are improving
their customer retention by 50 percent
or more.
Increase Revenue per Customer through
Cross-Sell
Epiphany Interaction Advisor increases cross-
sell revenue from each customer by lookingacross all possible offers and selecting the one
that will drive the highest expected value for
that individual. It uses a combination of
historical, personal, and contextual data to
create a real-time customer profile, and then
applies a unique blend of real-time analytics and
business rules to deliver the highest-impact
offers at the moment of interaction. Using this
solution, Epiphany customers are doubling and
tripling their offer acceptance rates and their
cross-sell revenue.
Increase Penetration of Product and Service
Bundles
Interaction Advisor increases carrier revenue by
allowing operators to use offer arbitration to
prioritize bundled offers over other programs,
and to drive bundles to the forefront of the
inbound marketing strategy. This ultimately
results in both increased revenue and enhanced
customer loyalty.
Ensure Consistent Multi-Channel Customer
Interactions
Epiphany Interaction Advisor was specifically
designed to ensure intelligent interactions
across any number of marketing channels.Using out-of-the-box interfaces, companies can
easily plug Interaction Advisor into their call
center, web site, point of sale, or any other
inbound channel. The Real-Time Decisioning
Service seamlessly manages messages across all
these channels using its unique combination of
dynamic business rules and real-time, self-
learning analytics. Coordinating with outbound
campaigns created in Epiphany Marketing is
both easy and intuitive through a web-based
user interface. Contact preferences can also be
created and enforced across all channels to
ensure the consistent treatment of customers.
Quickly Respond to Changing Market Conditions
Epiphany Interaction Advisor's easy to use web-
based interface allows you to create and deploy
changes in days, not months. Real-time reporting
provides an immediate view into the success of
campaigns and offers as they are rolled out,
which allows immediate adjustments to be made
whenever necessary. The real-time self-learning
analytics begin getting smarter immediately
about which customers respond to which offers—
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9Increasing Profitability through Intelligent Interactions: Innovative Marketing Strategies in the Communications Industry
SUCCESS STORY: BELL CANADA AND BELL MOBILITY
Bell Canada is Canada's leading communications company, providing service to resi-dential and business customers through wired and wireless voice and datacommunications, high speed and wireless Internet access, direct-to-home satellite, IP-broadband services, e-business solutions, and local and long distance phone services.Bell Mobility, a division of Bell Canada, is the country's largest wireless service provider.
The Interaction Advisor project introduced at Bell Mobility was initiated in an effort totransform its inbound call center into a revenue-generating and customer-centricoperation. In late 2000, Bell Mobility's marketing and customer service departmentscame together in an effort to change the contact centers from a traditional cost-cen-
ter service organization into a more modern, revenue-generating sales and serviceorganization. Bell Mobility sought a seasoned CRM leader that would become a long-term business partner, not simply a vendor. The company required a highly targetedreal-time marketing solution that could:
• Increase employee effectiveness• Raise customer satisfaction and loyalty• Decrease customer churn• Generate revenue through cross-sell and up-sell• Integrate easily with existing systems• Learn automatically in real time• Deploy quickly and easily
In June 2001, Bell Mobility implemented Interaction Advisor in its home-grown con-tact center application for 550 agents. Campaigns were categorized betweenpre-paid and post-paid wireless customers and included churn, cross-sell/up-sell andrevenue stimulation campaigns. Interaction Advisor now arbitrates between 70 differ-ent offers for each eligible customer interaction.
The project has been a smashing success. After implementing Interaction Advisor, BellMobility has been able to:
• Increase campaign velocity by 75%• Boost agent sales per hour by up to 18%• Increase sales revenues from the inbound channel by 16%
• Immediately adjust efforts through real-time campaign monitoring• Improve agent performance through real-time agent monitoring
With the success of Interaction Advisor at Bell Mobility, Bell Canada recently electedto expand its use of the product to an additional 2,300 Bell Canada contact centeragents. Bell Canada agents deliver offers across wireless, long distance, local service,Internet and satellite TV. Interaction Advisor arbitrates between 80 different offers foreach eligible customer interaction.
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no historical data is required. This allows you to
respond to changing market conditions faster
than ever before, decreasing marketing cycle
times, and becoming significantly more proactivein your marketing approach.
Augment Existing Systems to Deliver Rapid
Time to Value
Interaction Advisor plugs into existing IT
environments through a library of standards-
based interfaces. It leverages investments in
data warehouses and databases for customer
profile information and integrates easily to
front-end systems that expose inbound
marketing offers. Rather than ripping out and
replacing existing systems, Interaction Advisor
extracts and extends their value. Because it is
fully compatible with other systems, Epiphany
Interaction Advisor can be implemented in as
little as six weeks. As a result, businesses can
get up and running quickly, leading to payback
on investment in six months or less.
SEPARATING THE BEST FROM THE REST
The communications industry is now in the
midst of a painful consolidation, which results in
a confusing, fragmented and frustrating
experience for most customers. In order to
succeed in this environment, companies must
effectively compete for customer attention andretention through quality service and intelligent
customer interactions.
Leading consumer-oriented communications
companies—the ones that will survive and thrive
in the years to come—recognize that they must
strategically invest in deep, enduring and
profitable customer relationships. To accomplish
this, these companies are constantly refining
their customer strategies and customer-facing
business processes. They seek to leverage
inbound channels to sell more services to their
existing customers as opposed to constantly
chasing new ones.
However, what these companies also realize is
that they must leverage their existing
infrastructures more effectively if they are to
meet these objectives. Successful companies are
embracing technology that enables them to
manage customers on a more powerful and
personal level, but that does not require them to
rip out and replace their existing systems. This
ultimately increases ROI for all customer-related
investments, even legacy operational systems
that have to date delivered disappointing returns.
What is becoming increasingly clear is that
these leading companies are only widening the
gap between themselves and their less-savvy
competition. They are exploring new ways to
refine their marketing approaches, work
collaboratively with all of their enterprise-wide
departments and enhance the richness of each
and every customer interaction. They are
already pushing their inbound initiatives to new
lengths in an attempt to uncover the next best
practices that will provide competitive
differentiation. At some point, the distance
between the best and the rest will become
impossible to recover.
Forward-thinking companies in the communi-
cations industry have come to realize that the
time to invest in winning strategies-and best
practices-is now. The opportunity is clear and it
is being seized by an emerging set of market
leaders. The telecom industry may be in
transition, but the best are merely treating this
as an opportunity to redefine their relationships
with their customers and drive increased
customer loyalty, profit and enduring growth to
the front lines of their businesses.
Increasing Profitability through Intelligent Interactions: Innovative Marketing Strategies in the Communications Industry
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About Epiphany
Epiphany (NASDAQ: EPNY) provides CRM software solutions
that increase profitability at the largest consumer-oriented
companies by making every customer interaction intelligent.With over 475 customers in financial services, insurance, retail,
communications, and travel & leisure—including nearly 35
percent of the Fortune 100—Epiphany powers deep customer
insights and optimizes each relationship from both a revenue
generation and customer retention viewpoint.
With a suite of blended marketing, sales and service solutions,
Epiphany enables global organizations to align touchpoints,
processes and technologies around the most valuable enterprise
asset—the customer. Built on the industry's most advanced,
service-oriented architecture, Epiphany solutions address
problems that span business silos, departmental functions and
geographic locations, and result in rapid, measurable ROI. With
worldwide headquarters in San Mateo, CA, Epiphany serves
customers in more than 40 countries worldwide.
Contact
475 Concar Drive
San Mateo, CA 94402
USAp 650.578.7200
f 650.356.3810
epiphany.com
Global Offices
Americas:
+1.877.764.4163
Asia/Pac:
+61.2.9492.1200
Europe:
+44.118.929.7700
Japan:
Epiphany Solutions,
Ltd. +81.3.5733.1720
© 2003-04 Epiphany, Inc. All rights reserved. EPIPHANY, the Epiphany logo, and E.6 are trademark of Epiphany,Inc., registered in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other company names, product names, and trade-
marks are the property of their respective owners.
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