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Customer Contact Strategy: Definition – What to say to who, when. A pre-planned sequence of integrated, targeted communications with clearly defined goals.

 

 

Single, repeated and planned contacts.

Multiple contacts are only commercially feasible when the incremental value generated clears internal profitability hurdles. Consider for a moment the incremental lifetime value (or direct short-term revenue) augmented by smart interventions to customer behaviour and how much we can afford to spend over an extended period to shift the perceptions and behaviours of these customers.

Over the years, companies have evolved: in the early days (some are still are) most practiced a single contact to peddle their products.

Most then progressed on to executing repeated contacts – reminders. They believed this reinforced their messages. Now with more complex customer lifecycles, marketers are swearing by coordinated contact programs – an integrated contact strategy.

We pin the blame squarely on declining response, usually the #1 stimuli forcing marketers to try something new. As response rates decline so activity shrinks and a company finds it is fishing in a smaller and smaller pond. Marketers “reboot” their approach every few years to attain higher response rates.

Products have evolved – these days a complex (financial) product requires “solution selling” and multiple touch points to deliver true positive customer experience. We need a basis for broader engagement with prospects and a number of different messages that can be communicated over time, an integrated communication strategy.

Many studies have found that co-ordinated contact strategies, particularly those that use multiple channels, can have a greater long-term (and sustainable) impact on customer behaviour and drive increased return on investment than simpler tactical or repeated messages.

Adaptive contacts.

Many a company has openly claimed “higher response and conversion rates” with a triggered marketing approach. What most fail to realize is that a good integrated contact strategy is also adaptive. An orchestrated communications plan essentially takes an inside-out view; what we think should work referencing look alike models or historical snapshots of customer behavioral data.

To do better, what we really need is to factor in customer responses in the right-time. Obviously if we suffered from a “blind spot” – the inability to record contacts received at the channels – we may be offering counter-intuitive and potentially contentious propositions.

This is a fine art, balancing the speed vs. precision conundrum – the holy grail of adaptive contact planning.