Direct Marketing Magazine September 2017

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Product sampling: Costing, options and making it work

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The great data debate: Individual versus geodemographic

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Contact Management The People Issue

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vol. 30 • No. 8 • September 2017

The Authority on Data-Driven Engagement & Operations

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An Insight Squared pop-up card that’s aesthetically pleasing and the perfect size for desk display.

// 3 Customer Centricity Vol. 30 | No. 8 | September 2017 EDITOR Sarah O’Connor - sarah@dmn.ca PRESIDENT Steve Lloyd - steve@dmn.ca DESIGN / PRODUCTION Jennifer O’Neill - jennifer@dmn.ca Advertising Sales Mark Henry - mark@dmn.ca CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Meryl Kremer Avaid Abiri Rob Linke Mike Aoki Emily Nielsen Gabriel Constantin Holly Simmons Larry Filler Anand Subramaniam John Forrester Patrice Tanguay Bob Gaito Dave Ward Kristen Herhold Dolly Konzelmann LLOYDMEDIA INC. HEAD OFFICE / SUBSCRIPTIONS / PRODUCTION:

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Why data intelligence is the cornerstone of people-based marketing Dimensional/high-value direct mail

Dimensional mail in the digital age

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Back to the future Using dimensional mail in B2B marketing

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Product sampling: Costing, options and making it work

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Five ways interaction analytics can improve customer experience

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What you need to know about the future of e-commerce apps Excellent Execution

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Why you need to train your outsourced staff

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Customer Centricity

Why data intelligence is the cornerstone of people-based marketing

By Gabriel Constantin

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Gabriel Constantin is the president & CEO of CentricIQ, a leading marketing intelligence and performance agency. Gabriel has spent more than 16 years in the marketing analytics and technology arena and collaborated with global brands in the health care, financial services and retail sectors. Gabriel has led the development of CentricIQ LINK, an enterprise level solution that integrates online and offline communication channels in an allin-one marketing platform.

â?ą DMN.ca

he business to consumer (B2C) landscape is changing dramatically. Customers research or buy online but they also want to walk into a store to find inventory or call a contact centre to activate a service. This demand for a seamless online and offline customer experience is challenging B2C organizations and shaping the market of the future. Amazon is a perfect example. This online trailblazer created a consumer that expects to find everything online but it has now purchased Whole Foods to establish a substantial offline presence. Now it is about finding the balance between online and offline.

In the past, marketing teams made major investments in tools to meet online demands. Now marketers are faced with a customer that could be either online or off. Decisions such as how much to spend in each area are difficult especially when online costs are being driven up by the bidding models presented by Google and Facebook. The answer of how to be more targeted will lie in the data.

Data will drive more intelligent decisions that will allow marketers to better understand prospects and customers at the individual level. It means there is an opportunity to present personalized, relevant and timely messages and promotional offers that generate responses on a channel they will engage in. This is not artificial intelligence (AI), which is just a tool that is years away from being effective or affordable. It is about intelligence based on demographics, psychographics and behavioural data that is brought together from both online and offline channels to create analytics and modeling to gain insights and drive engagement.

The result is people-based marketing.

Today’s insight provides limited intelligence based on single one-time campaigns and channels delivering a 1,000-foot view after the fact. The usual campaign method is to first pick a segment and then a channel that seems a good fit, build a message and campaign, and then hope prospects respond positively. Or you can buy a prospect list that may look like your target customers, then direct mail or email them and hope this will be more personal or customer-centric. Neither of these methods deliver great success and any intelligence is usually very inconclusive. The people-based marketing approach starts from the ground up and gets personal with individual prospects and customers.

People-based marketing needs to start with the individual in mind and how they will engage with the

brand across multiple channels to eventually become a customer. To start, you need to bring prospect and customer data together so it can be analyzed and modelled for your market to identify the best target prospects. This will bring together data from corporate systems (first party) on how customers engaged with the brand, marketing campaign data, industry information (second party) that could include data on the competition or geographical information, and lastly prospect and profile information (third party).

The consolidated view of both prospects and customers will allow analysis on who are the best customers and prospects using look-alike models, deciding what is the right message and the best online or offline channels to engage.

From the analysis and modelling, targeted campaigns and messages can be selected and created while considering the journey a prospect will take when engaging with the brand. As they engage, it is important to track and record activity continuously so the modeling can be enhanced and optimized to convert into customers.

People-based marketing starts with targeting prospects individually (i.e. one to one) rather than using segment-based targeting and start-stop promotions (i.e. one to many). This always-on and long-term approach performs better than a one-time campaign approach. Recent results using people-based marketing show 60% higher response rates (Exchange Wire, May 2016) than the traditional method. When faced with difficult ROI questions, it is hard to ignore the real results of people-based marketing. Amazon has proven the effectiveness as they have become the masters of presenting the right message to their customers to entice more sales. They did it online and now we can expect to see them using similar techniques offline.

People-based marketing is the next logical step for B2C organizations but it is a long-term project. Your marketing approach will not change overnight but you can start small. Invest some of your marketing budget (e.g. 10%) each year toward people-based marketing and work to enhance it over time. With the complexity in the data world, marketing teams may need support from a trusted consultant or partner but really understanding your target will pay dividends in the long term. Marketers will need to move toward a people-based marketing approach and make data the cornerstone of their campaigns.

SEptember 2017

Introducing Postal Code Targeting: an entirely new way to target and reach new customers Exclusively from Canada Post Connect with prospects in a whole new way. Now you can identify only those postal codes that match the profile of your ideal customers, then reach them with direct mail. Target using Canada Post audience insights, your own customer data, or combine them both for more refined targeting. You can even suppress existing customers within your selected postal codes, to keep your resources focused on acquisition.

Transform your acquisition marketing strategy with this powerful new solution from Canada Post Smartmail Marketing . canadapost.ca/pctargeting TM

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Dimensional/high-value direct mail

Dimensional mail in the digital age

By Bob Gaito

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etail is rapidly changing— we see it all around us. Amazon is venturing into brick and mortar stores. Big boxes are wading deeper into e-commerce. Online retailers are mailing print catalogues. It seems brands everywhere are rethinking their business models and marketing strategies. Direct mail is right in the mix because, when done correctly, it’s a powerful component of the kinds of multichannel marketing strategies needed to survive and thrive in today’s Wild West of retail. Direct mail response rates are at their highest point in over a decade, with dimensional mail response rates at the top.

Digital marketing is nimble and quick to execute, but it doesn’t pack the same punch as something tangible that you can put your fingers on. A Temple University neuromarketing study found that direct mail tops digital for engagement time, recall and purchases. Digital ads seized the attention of consumers quicker, but physical ads held that attention longer, elicited a greater emotional reaction and played a more direct role in purchase decisions. While consumers who received direct mail offers were able to recall the brand 75% of the time, consumers who received digital-only versions could remember the brand only 44% of the time.

But it’s not about pitting digital marketing and direct mail against each other—because they work best together. When a catalogue mails, online sales spike across all web channels. There isn’t always a clear cause-and-effect relationship between a strategy and the revenue ❱ DMN.ca

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Dimensional/high-value direct mail it generates though. That’s because for most customers, the path to purchase is a journey with many potential stops along the way. In the end, direct mail and digital marketing should both be parts of a holistic customer experience.

Multichannel marketing isn’t just about getting your message out there in as many places as possible—you need to give customers a unified, personalized experience across your various marketing channels.

Here are some great ways to optimize your direct mail with digital channels and data to provide a holistic multichannel experience. These strategies will help you acquire new customers and market more effectively to the ones you already have: ❯❯ Triggered postcards: Similar to how triggered email is automatically sent when a shopper leaves your website without making a purchase, triggered postcards are automatically sent to the shopper’s postal address. And just like triggered email, the postcard can contain images of products the shopper viewed on the website, as well as recommendations for similar items. One advantage of postcards is that with email, the web visitor needs to be opted-in to your email list before you can send. That’s not the case with postcards. Using the right service provider, you can identify web visitors not on your list and send them a postcard.

You can also use postcards as a second line of communication to follow up with triggered email recipients who don’t open your emails. Because postcards are more expensive, it’s important to use a service provider that captures and analyzes intent data for signs that a shopper is motivated to buy. ❯❯

Dimensional direct mail: Dimensional mail brings higher response rates, but is even more expensive than flat mail—which makes sending to the right people more important than ever. Some of your best audiences for dimensional mail are former customers and prospects that you’ve had previous contact with. Recency

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is important, so the time delay associated with traditional methods for defining a mailing list can undermine your efforts. To make the most of dimensional mail, you should be using recent online engagement data—including who’s been on your website, what they looked at and carted, and who’s been engaging with your emails. For example, former customers who opted-out of your emails yet recently visited your website are likely to be worth the higher investment. ❯❯

Email: Messaging such as “Your Spring Catalogue is on the way, keep an eye out for it” will often increase catalogue engagement, leading to higher conversions.

Send this just prior to the expected in-home date.

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Facebook audiences: The average Facebook user spends more than 30 minutes per day scrolling through their newsfeed. You can easily reinforce direct mail using Facebook Audiences and vice versa. The right service provider will be able to match your mailing list to email addresses and help get you set up with a Facebook Audiences campaign in sync with your direct mail.

Think of it this way: if you commit to a cost of $0.50 per catalogue to get in front of a consumer, the incremental one or two cents to supplement that with a coordinated Facebook ad is a good investment.

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Injectable content: Many of your customers will also subscribe to online publications, such as the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, that may allow you to inject ads into the emails they send to their subscribers.

Like with Facebook Audiences, once you match your mailing list to email addresses, you can simultaneously reach them on this channel. This is a great strategy for digitally reaching prospects who haven’t opted into your email list. Your service provider will need to be able to link email addresses to your mail file and your broker should be familiar with vendors who can facilitate injecting your ads.

Direct mail response rates are at their highest point in over a decade, with dimensional mail response rates at the top. ❯❯

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Hotlines: The most recent customer names acquired, called hotlines, are typically the most responsive to direct mail. In many cases, marketers restrict hotlines to recent purchasers only. Increasing your hotline pool by adding website visitors who didn’t make a purchase can be an effective strategy for increasing hotlines and response rates. Is your catalogue about to go out? You can look to see who’s been on your website lately and add visitors who are not on your current list. You can also test including new names with different levels of engagement, such as cart abandoners only or cart abandoners plus product browsers. Recency is king—it always has been and likely always will be. By introducing real-time web consumer feeds (visitors and purchases) to your mail stream you can improve recency in ways that historically have not been possible. The result: improved response rates and increased sales.

Predictive models: Web visitor and email engagement histories can help you improve your mailing segmentation strategy. Many direct mailers use predictive models to drive mailing segmentation and mail/ no mail decisioning. In many cases, purchase recency is one of the strongest variables in the model mix. An effective strategy can be to “re-activate” older buyers based on recent engagement from web visits and/or email opens and clicks.

Check with your modeling team to see if they can incorporate web and email engagement data to increase your model’s effectiveness. We have seen that housefile models that use recent online data average a response rate lift of 43% and a dollars per book lift of 26%.

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Intelligent lightboxes: Sometimes it’s challenging to measure the extent that direct mail is driving customers to your website. Purchasers are typically asked to enter a catalogue code at checkout, but this often doesn’t happen. In addition, this tracking method fails to measure the increased engagement of customers who are driven to the website but don’t make a purchase at that time (which is still valuable, because the more engaged they are with your brand, the more likely they are to make a purchase in the future). With intelligent lightbox technology, recent catalogue recipients can be identified and welcomed— with their activities tracked from the moment they enter your website. Look for a vendor that can link your mail file to your real-time website visitors and pre-populate the catalogue source code.

As you can see, there are many ways to leverage digital channels and data to reinforce your direct mail programs and vice versa.

The key to success with offline programs is to use expertise in list brokerage and analysis. While the benefits of successfully deployed direct mail campaigns will yield great results, there can be greater risk because the cost per contact is typically much higher. You need resources with expertise in both digital and direct mail program management to be successful in this landscape.

Bob Gaito is CEO of 4Cite, the first and only

full-service, real-time interaction management services provider with a centralized interaction hub that uses innovative web visitor identification technology and advanced data and analytics to identify previously unidentifiable customers and influence purchasing activity. For more information, visit www.4cite.com.

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Dimensional/high-value direct mail

FACTSET’s “All the right tools all in one place”: a clear message that’s echoed in the (functional) gift.

This whimsical Tetra Pak campaign serves up a free sample in an engaging and multi-layer experience.

An Insight Squared pop-up card that’s aesthetically pleasing and the perfect size for desk display.

Back to the future Using dimensional mail in B2B marketing

By Meryl Kremer

I

t’s hard to believe that snail mail is making a comeback in the age of instant gratification, email and PM. Advances in web technology have made it possible to track a customer’s online footprint and anticipate buying habits with impressive accuracy. What, then, can direct mail offer marketers that can’t be accomplished in the virtual sphere?

The answer, ironically, is oldfashioned physicality. Amidst a multitude of positive changes in customer experience standards, it seems there’s room for nostalgia. A study published in 2015 found that 36% of Millennials and more than 41% of Boomers still look forward to checking their mailbox daily.

Furthermore, big-name companies continue to dish out thousands of dollars to deliver print catalogues in the digital age because consumers spend more money

❱ DMN.ca

shopping online after flipping through glossy paper ads.

But what does that mean for B2B marketers? Dimensional mailers—a piece of promotional mail that includes anything more than your average flat mail envelope—can be used to inspire intrigue, boost engagement, generate demand and create memorable connections with valued prospects.

Why dimensional over flat mail?

When it comes to mail, it’s safe to say that not all envelopes are created equal. ​Think about your own mailbox—you probably receive the garden variety of bills, credit card applications and sales fliers. And most of those items end up in the trash without ever being opened.

Dimensional mail is the exception to the rule—it’s the mail you look for when you’re quickly sifting through the stack in your

mailbox. It gives you a feeling of excitement, that you are about to open something that is going to make you happy—hence why it has greater penetrating power and boosts demand generation more consistently than flat direct mail.

Getting your prospects to open a package is half the battle, but B2B marketers have goals that transcend simply putting a smile on a prospect’s face. Successful demand generation campaigns incite action by asking prospects to do something—visit a website, book an appointment, contact a sales person, schedule a demo, etc.

In order to produce the desired effect, your dimensional mailer needs to be thoughtful, creative, intentional and superbly executed.

While the execution aspect can be costly due to higher packaging, posting and design costs, a highquality product reflects well on your brand and garners higher ROI.

So what makes for a successful dimensional mailer?

Include a clear call-to-action A dimensional mailer is only effective if it presents a clear call-to-action and clearly defines what initiative you’d like them to take (and how). Effective customer engagement begins with a quality experience or a value proposition and continues when you ask prospects to trust you by taking the next step you’ve laid out for them.

Create a compelling experience With dimensional mail, you have the opportunity to be clever and creative. Take advantage of the fact that you likely have your prospect’s full attention by finding a meaningful and fun way to integrate your brand’s identity and message into every aspect of the mailer experience. In that regard, if you include an object or gift, it SEptember 2017

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Dimensional/high-value direct mail

Clever, intriguing and consistent with enactus colors.

should be congruent with both your message and your unique mission.

Generate excitement The best way to get someone excited? Give them something for free—a toy, an object, a sample product, a useful tool, an unexpected aesthetic flourish— something that makes your message more memorable, worth keeping around and worth talking about. Though toys (as opposed to tools) don’t have implicit function, they offer a means

of delighting customers—of generating goodwill as you begin to nurture a relationship.

That said, it’s important to know your prospective audience and determine what kind of dimensional item would best fulfill their expectations and match their unique conceptions of value. The way we measure value is nuanced by culture (be it industry culture or geographical location)—so if you’re looking to send your dimensional mailer to a culturally diverse audience, it’s important to take those differences into account during the product design stage.

Leave a lasting impression Ideas with staying power have the most potential for demand

generation. Make sure your mailer and any included gift has staying power. It should be something that your prospect can display in their office or interact with often. Make sure that the object is branded with your company name and logo so that the connection isn’t lost after the first big reveal. Maybe they’re not ready for your services now, but if budgets change you’re more likely to be on their minds if the object still owns real estate on their desk.

Be selective To see the most return, it’s important to send your mailer to a highly targeted audience. Part of your B2B marketing strategy prior to launching a dimensional mailer campaign should include research into your target audience—that generally means well-qualified leads who require the solution you offer and have at least a baseline understanding of your company and brand.

Stay on brand Make sure the logos, colours and

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typefaces are consistent with your company and brand so that your identity is consistent across channels, making it easy for prospects to recognize your brand.

Don’t work in a vacuum As with all your marketing effort, your mailer should be part of a larger campaign that aligns with the overarching goals of your B2B marketing strategy.

With integration in mind, create a landing page that your mailer directs prospects to and send a follow-up email that also links to that page—anything to get prospects involved beyond the mailer experience.

Meryl Kremer is a journalist for New Breed Marketing in Burlington, VT. New Breed delivers comprehensive inbound marketing services on behalf of its partners, who span a wide range of industries and locations. They specialize in bridging the marketing and sales divide—pairing expert strategy with responsive web design, advanced metric tracking, realtime pipeline feedback and custom content creation. Find out how to get New Breed on your team by visiting newbreedmarketing.com.

of US consumers are open to purchasing from Canada.

The Internet has removed the barriers to shopping across borders. The data is clear – the US is fertile ground for Canadian merchants looking to find new customers.

How can you get your share of this pie? Focus on the reasons US consumers are interested in Canada’s products: unique merchandise and better prices.

Only

20% have done so.

For more information, visit bronto.com.

SEptember 2017

DMN.ca ❰

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Dimensional/high-value direct mail

Product sampling: Costing, options and making it work

By Dave Ward

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y history with product sampling dates back to 1999 and I worked on many large sampling projects right through until 2016. If there is one thing I have seen it is that naivety can cost a lot of money and sometimes even jeopardize the success of sampling projects.

I hope that this article will help anyone who might be looking to embark on a sampling project. For ease of presentation, I have broken this article down into three major segments: benefits and costs, program options and planning and execution Benefits and costs Sampling is a win-win because it provides numerous benefits for both the consumer and the brand.

Consider the following: ❯❯ Sampling puts the product directly into the consumer’s hands. ❯❯ Remember “try it, you’ll like it.”

Not only can they try it, they can also appreciate the benefits first hand. ❯❯ Sampling makes an impact, creates excitement and is a memorable experience for the consumer. ❯❯ It cuts through the bombardment of other messages and speaks for itself. ❯❯ Sampling creates a sense of appreciation and a propensity for loyalty to the brand. ❯❯ Consumers readily accept samples, especially from trusted sources. ❯❯ It is an excellent way to gather key consumer data. ❯❯ You can have open programs, target specific groups or use controlled redemptions (e.g. sequenced redemption codes in unaddressed offerings). ❯❯ Benefits of accompanying printed inserts are inherent (studies are showing that print fosters better comprehension, retention and higher response rates when compared to using ❱ DMN.ca

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the same content in an online environment).

Ultimately, well-executed sampling programs should result in a lift in sales.

Cost is important. Looking at 2017 postage rates, postage and mail preparation could range anywhere from less than a dollar to $10 or more, but it is more likely to be in the one to three dollar range.

You would have to add the cost of printed materials and samples onto this as well.

Costs are certainly directly proportional to both weight and size. Most mail service providers (MSPs) can recommend the most cost-effective package size for the sampling application.

Program options Multi-sample packages or standalone Sometimes a given organization will send out a package that contains samples for more than one if its brands. In other cases, packages will contain a single sample from one brand only.

If you piggy-back with some of your other corporate brands, you can reduce costs. On the other hand, if you mail your brand only you will have greater prominence and can shine on your own. Plus, if you mail your brand only, you can decide on your own packaging as well as other messages or personalized inserts that specifically suit your brand and campaign.

There are pros and cons for each of these options and they must be assessed in light of specific objectives and costs.

Packaging—elegance, utility or both Your packaging can range from cheap and cheerful to elegant.

Although this is often a function of budget, most brand managers do try to make a good impression; however, sometimes it is a question of perception as to what suits best.

For example, I have seen the same

samples mailed on behalf of two different brand managers on the same brand (at different times, of course) where one brand manager opted for cheap and cheerful the other insisted on far more glamorous packaging.

For most new product launches or high profile campaigns, we often see pillow boxes, smaller gift boxes or, at the very least, attractively designed envelopes.

Some companies that sample on an ongoing basis might also design packaging that can be used for a variety of different types of samples.

Apart from aesthetics, utility is also extremely important as you don’t want the items to be tattered upon arrival. It is important to remember that many items will travel thousands of miles and endure handing at several levels before they are finally delivered.

Some thicker samples with square corners can tear plain paper envelopes. Items that are loose inside boxes can also fly around and sustain damage. In this case, you can look at specialized inserts and/ or certain types of bridging to keep samples secure within the package.

Practicality of your samples If you are mailing product samples via the postal system, always remember that your samples are likely going to be subject to extreme temperature variations. It could be -30 degrees Celsius going across the prairies in the winter and most places in Canada hit a few days of 30+ degree days in the summer and it can get a lot hotter than that inside a transport trailer.

If your product samples are subject to extreme temperatures or an active ingredient might lose its effectiveness if exposed to temperature extremes, you may not want to mail them.

It is also important to know whether freezing might affect your samples. Some things expand when frozen and should this cause your packaging to break or leak, again, mail might not be the best bet.

You should also examine items to see if they might leak when tipped.

Mail can get turned every which way, so the propensity to leak must be considered. In addition, will the lid pop under physical pressure?

We have seen dispensers with flip tops, which when squeezed firmly will cause the lid to pop and the contents to spurt out. This may not be as likely to occur in transit, but it can happen.

Above all, just use common sense. I recall being asked during the summer months to mail chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil. As you can imagine this was not a good idea, but the customer wanted to proceed regardless.

Without getting into a lot of detail, suffice to say that we have seen other items that were questionable.

Unfortunately, in most of these cases, the desire to not waste promotional items seems to outweigh the logical decision of not mailing something that is going to arrive in a messy or unusable condition.

Personalization and targeted inserts Effective personalization allows for insightful communication that speaks directly to consumers in subtle ways. As it requires more background data work and there are more print costs, it does add to the overall project costs. Nonetheless, depending on the nature and objectives of the campaign, the benefits often far outweigh the costs.

A sample could be accompanied by a personalized card or letter. In addition to a personalized greeting such as “Hello Lucy,” the letter could also reference other known information. For example, if we are sampling analgesics and we know that the individual suffers from back pain, we could include something like, “We all know that when back pain strikes…”

Depending on the depth of the data, you can also include targeted inserts in the form of generic cards or literature that varies by specific SEptember 2017

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Dimensional/high-value direct mail conditions. Again, using analgesics as an example, generic inserts could vary based on the customer’s type of pain, their preferred remedy (e.g. Ibuprofen, ASA, Acetaminophen, etc.) and whether they are brand loyal or otherwise.

The quality of data is extremely important when using personalization and you will need to ensure that your data is properly formatted and that all data is in the correct fields. Your mail service provider should be able to clean and re-align data, as may be required. Good design of web forms or other forms that are used to gather data can also help considerably. Bad data results in “impersonal personalization” and, unfortunately, attempts to use personalization then become a detriment rather that an asset.

Other inserts and content There are many other types of inserts in addition to personalized and targeted inserts, including but not limited to general sales and product literature, coupons with bar codes or other vehicles for tracking redemptions and materials with links to other online offers.

It is beyond the scope of this post to look at all of the variations of these types of inserts but, suffice to say, there are many different things that you can do to add value to the overall package.

Fulfillment cycles Timing of the actual fulfillment of requested samples can impact the consumer experience as well as elements of integrated campaigns.

Although it might be more of a planning issue, it is important to note that there might be instances where you may want to accumulate requests to meet Canada Post minimum mailing quantities. If we are fortunate enough to be able the use Machineable Personalized Mail (Addressed Admail) the minimum quantity will be 500. However, most sampling campaigns use nonmachineable mail products (often Dimensional Personalized Mail), where the minimum quantity is 1,000 pieces. This is one reason we often see “please allow four to six weeks for delivery” as it provides a buffer for accumulating requests, mail preparation and delivery.

Of course, Lettermail and parcel SEptember 2017

services can also be options, but they do tend to be far more expensive.

Planning and execution Many people that are planning and executing sampling campaigns will be well versed in the development of campaign objectives and project management. Nonetheless, having clear objectives is very important to the success of any campaign.

Materials planning Although items such as general inserts coupons etc. must be designed, ordered and delivered to your mail service provider, these items do not normally pose quite the same challenges as special packaging can.

If working with pillow boxes, folded presentation boxes or other forms of die cut carriers, it is always wise to have the manufacturer send you some prototypes, based on the die line that you have decided on. It is not surprising to see prototypes that are marginally out of spec or that just do not fold the way you had intended. Sometimes when working with heavier card stocks, the thickness of the stock can impact how the item folds and it is not unusual to go through a few iterations of prototypes until signing off on the perfect package.

As a rule of thumb, it is always helpful to have all materials at your mail service provider’s location well in advance of the first data downloads, avoiding any last minute rushes.

Trust your mail service provider Unless you are an expert on different mailing products, you will need to rely on your MSP’s advice in the areas of volumes, sizes, weights, rigidity, delivery times and, last but not least, re-send options, which are sometimes at parcel rates.

Out of spec can mean out of budget Many of the samples as well as packaging I have seen have been out spec for basic promotional mail products. I have also seen presentation boxes that were ready to go to print that would have resulted in postage in the $10 range rather than the one to two dollar range, as expected by the brand managers. Of course, boxes can be re-printed (though it does

add to cost and results in delays) but samples that are out of spec are not that easy to replace.

The postal indicia, reserved areas and creative It might sound like a small point, but should you use the wrong type of postal indicia Canada Post will probably not accept your mailing. This can be a very serious challenge. At the same time, you might use the correct indicia, but if it is too small, too large or the customer number printed inside the indicia is too small, you could be looking at a hefty surcharge.

Another ouch!

Regardless of the type of mail, there are always some areas with minimum clearance tolerances.

Further, each type of mail affords less or more space for creative on the envelope or mailing piece itself.

Again you can rely on your MSP to keep you informed in these areas.

Volumes can affect both delivery times and your costs Most product sampling campaigns in Canada will use Oversize Personalized Mail (formerly Addressed Admail) or Dimensional Personalized Mail. Further, based on the size of some samples themselves, many will not qualify for Machineable Personalized Mail. This is very important, because the normal minimum quantity for Machineable Personalized Mail is 500 pieces, whereas for Non-Machineable Personalized Mail the minimum is 1,000 pieces. We can mail fewer under what is called a phantom mailing, but we must still pay for the minimum quantity. As this could very quickly add to your costs, you will want to be at or near the minimum every time you mail.

Many sampling campaigns are driven by offers on websites.

Shortly after launch we usually see a very large spike as initial requests roll in; however, this can drop off quickly and sometimes diminish to a trickle over time. This means that although it can put demands on fulfillment resources at the outset, with plenty of volume we always have sufficient quantities to get the best pricing. However, if we get to trickle mode, the only option to maintain reasonable delivery times might be a phantom mailing.

Even with this there can be a trade

off as to whether it might not be better to use the more expensive Lettermail. However, there are no Lettermail alternatives for most dimensional products, leaving parcel service as the only possible option in some cases and that can get very expensive!

Accumulating records After the initial front-end spike in requests, it is normal to accumulate records to at least the minimum quantity for the postal product that we are using. As noted above, this minimum is usually 1,000 pieces.

Consideration must be given to the timeline for accumulating records.

With some brands, it has been up to two weeks. However, if it is decided that pieces will be mailed at less than minimum quantities after a given period, again, the additional postage costs must be built into the budget.

Accommodating good data Although your MSP will be affected by the quality of your data, especially if you plan to use any form of personalization, those responsible for the initial design of the web form or other response devices should ensure that the data to be gathered will be both flexible in use and as accurate as possible.

It is always advisable to split the contact name into First Name and Last Name fields and to use edits and pull-downs, radio buttons, etc. in an online environment, wherever possible.

Should you plan to use personalized notes or letters when dealing with French consumers, you will also need to know the gender if you plan to use Chère (feminine) or Cher (masculine) in the greeting.

Conclusion Sampling campaigns are very diverse in nature and it would not be possible to cover every aspect for every type of campaign; however, I believe that the foregoing covers most of the major items you would want to consider when planning a product sampling campaign.

Dave Ward is the owner of Wardworkz, a company that offers direct mail and direct marketing consulting, training and other creative services. You may reach Dave at (519) 787-1749, wardworkz@gmail.com or www.wardworkz.com\marketing.

DMN.ca ❰

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In the mail This column is sponsored by

To learn more about Canada Post’s integrated direct marketing solutions, please visit canadapost.ca/smartmailmarketing.

On-trend fashion brand and Canada Post tailor successful relationship Frank + Oak relies on Canada Post as a complete partner—from marketing campaigns to impeccable end-to-end online shopping experiences

By Rob Linke

Impressive return on investment When Frank + Oak promoted its new store in Toronto using direct mail, it achieved: • A 200% ROI from inactive clients; • A response rate 26% higher than target; • 45% coupon redemption in store, higher than average; and • 350% ROI from active clients.

❱ DMN.ca

F

rank + Oak offers customers a unique experience. Its mission—to help a generation of men and women dress and live well— percolates through the entire business. Design and manufacturing, digital and in-store shopping experiences, returns and customer service: Frank + Oak does it all, ensuring quality at every stage.

Frank + Oak is one of Canada’s leading omnichannel innovators. In Canada Post, they found an equally innovative partner with a broad range of cutting-edge solutions to help their business grow and succeed.

“From the start, we looked for an e-commerce partner that would be more than a reliable delivery provider,” says Hicham Ratnani, co-founder and COO/ CFO of Frank + Oak. “We wanted someone innovative, who would understand our needs and provide solutions that would help us deliver the superior end-to-end experience we were determined to create.

Canada Post was that perfect partner—and our special relationship grew stronger over time.”

As the winner of the Best Online Shopping Experience (large retailer) in the 2015 Canada Post E-commerce Innovation Awards, Frank + Oak clearly has an appetite for fresh approaches. In the dynamic Montreal fashion sector, it stands out as an early adopter of Canada Post innovations. It was the first e-commerce retailer in Montreal to integrate Canada

Post’s Web Services solutions, less than a year after the launch of their website. These solutions make returns hassle-free by letting customers go online, request a return, then download and print the return label. Customers can now drop their return into any of Canada Post’s nearly 20,000 street letter boxes or more than 6,200 retail post offices.

Frank + Oak was also quick to measure the great opportunities of using Canada Post’s Tracked Packet USA. The decision made perfect sense: most of the brand’s online sales are to the U.S. Frank + Oak works hand-in-glove with Canada Post to ensure a fast, reliable and transparent shopping, delivery and returns experience. This includes parcel tracking—Frank + Oak is able to give shoppers updates at every stage of their order’s journey, which helps to drive loyalty.

Canada Post Smartmail Marketing drives sales In the marketing realm, Canada Post helps Frank + Oak build their strategies to increase brand awareness, acquire shoppers and motivate clients to spend more.

It ensures that the message gets to the right homes by segmenting consumer profiles and data. It employs different formats and approaches based on marketing trends to help the message to be noticed and read. And it analyzes campaign results to help the retailer fineSEptember 2017

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tune its next direct mail campaign.

When the online retailer opened six brick-andmortar locations across Canada in 2014, it used the mini-catalogue—Canada Post’s latest direct mail product—to promote the new store in Toronto and the company’s website. It chose Canada Post Personalized Mail service (then called Addressed Admail) to reach active and inactive customers, in two scheduled mailings.

Customers were offered 25% off online and in-store purchases. The response rates from both mailings were impressive, on the web and in store.

“Alongside the explosion of highly targetable digital media, consumers still respond to analogue, tactile experiences,” says Eric Alper, chief marketing officer at Frank + Oak. “The mini-catalogue is a powerful way to reengage audiences and provide useful content that connects with their shopping habits and passions.”

A dedicated Canada Post Commercial Service Network agent works with printers, verifies the mail piece specifications and ensures the pieces are all inducted on time. That effort frees up Frank + Oak from these time-consuming responsibilities.

An effective, mutually beneficial and ongoing collaboration: this is what Frank + Oak and Canada Post have forged over time. The close relationship shows up in unexpected ways.

SEptember 2017

The shipping labels on Frank + Oak parcels are co-branded, for one. And in the front window display of a Frank + Oak store in Montreal during the 2015 peak holiday season, mannequins stood next to mailboxes amid the snow—wearing not the brand’s apparel, but the uniforms of Canada Post delivery agents.

The surprising choice makes perfect sense when you realize the depth and breadth of the partnership between these two great brands.

More than style makes Frank + Oak stand out. It’s also quality and doing things smarter—the very things they see in Canada Post.

To learn more about Canada Post’s full range of services for large businesses, visit canadapost.ca/ businesssolutions.

Rob Linke is the director of writing services at Canada Post.

DMN.ca ❰

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Feature

A decade of following the money: Environics Analytics releases WealthScapes 2017 Q&A with lead developer Peter Miron

T

en years ago, Environics Analytics created a database that measured the assets, liabilities and net worth of Canadians. Called WealthScapes, the database originally consisted of 64 financial and investment statistics intended to help financial institutions better understand their customers. But like any useful product, over time its developers have found ways to make it better. Now in its tenth year, the number of variables has nearly tripled and the dataset has become popular not just among bankers and financial planners but with retailers, university fundraisers and real estate developers.

“WealthScapes has become a powerful tool to help users understand how today’s customers will behave financially tomorrow,” says Peter Miron, vice president of demographic and economic data at EA. In this Q&A, Miron talks more about the evolution and application of WealthScapes 2017.

Q:

WealthScapes is now in its tenth year providing financial and investment data. How is this year’s edition different from those in the past?

A: We keep adding authoritative sources for the data. While some financial databases rely on just one source, we draw on more than 30 resources to produce its authoritative numbers, including the Bank of Canada, Equifax and Statistics Canada. And this year, we’ve incorporated housing data from The Teranet-National Bank Regional and Property Type Sub-Indices. From these sources, WealthScapes features 178 key financial and investment statistics, including disposable income, liquid assets, retirement savings, real estate values, consumer debt and equity holdings. And the multiple sources allow analysts to

❱ DMN.ca

match the best available control totals in Canada so the data will be endorsed by chief economists.

Q:

Exactly how is WealthScapes used in the marketplace?

A: It plays a vital role in a range of business applications, including target marketing, customer insights, media planning, site location studies and response analysis. Banks and investment companies use the database to calculate wallet share and market potential for specific products like RRSPs, TFSAs, mortgages and GICs. Universities and charities use it to identify high-value donors from contributor lists and target areas that may be home to prospects with sizable investment portfolios. Retailers and real estate developers draw on WealthScapes data to plan commercial and residential developments and better understand financial risks.

All use the data to help identify areas of opportunity and ways to support their marketing strategies.

Q:

Why do you think WealthScapes has gained popularity over the years?

A: Marketers are increasingly facing challenges in understanding their customers—thanks in no small part to the sheer quantity of information available today.

So many are looking for reliable data to help them develop sound business strategies and launch effective campaigns. And datadriven marketing initiatives are becoming increasingly common across a range of sectors.

WealthScapes is also becoming more valuable because as more Canadians retire, their purchase and donation behaviour will depend less on their income and more on their accumulated wealth.

And that’s what WealthScapes captures so well: the assets, debts

and wealth of Canadians.

Q:

Will you describe a typical financial application?

A: Our financial sector customers use WealthScapes to calculate wallet share, market share and market penetration of a product. A typical application involves comparing their product holdership, value and wallet sizes to the values in their market. This analysis lets them understand which financial products are doing well in terms of overall holdership rates, as well as the dollar value of those products.

And they can determine the size of the remaining opportunity.

For example, a credit union might learn that even though a large proportion of households in its market have term deposits with them, the dollar values of these products significantly underperform the market average.

This suggests an opportunity to increase engagement with the members that have these products, helping win a greater share of their wallets.

Q:

What about a fundraising case?

A: Customers in other industries and not-for-profits often use WealthScapes to identify pockets of opportunity that may not have been revealed with traditional market analysis. Several years ago, the BC Cancer Foundation wanted to increase its donor network and sought data on the net worth of its contributors. By integrating WealthScapes data with the foundation’s database of nearly 500,000 past supporters, analysts determined the net worth of their neighbourhoods, which helped them identify donors with the potential to be converted into major contributors. That’s typical.

WealthScapes helps fundraisers

locate affluent people or retirees who, while they may be living on fixed incomes from pensions and registered investments, still have substantial spending power from sizable financial portfolios.

Q:

This year’s WealthScapes paints a pretty rosy picture of the financial health of Canadians.

What’s happening?

A: Overall, 2016 proved to be a good year for Canadians’ balance sheets, as rising assets, pensions and real estate values increased their net worth and modest borrowing kept their debt levels in check. Nationwide, average household net worth rose an impressive 12% over the previous year to $770,635, while average household debt grew a relatively restrained 4.4% to an average of $139,387 in 2016. Meanwhile, Canadians increased their savings and investments last year—by 5.6% to $95,710 and by 13.2% to $182,238, respectively—while tempering their consumer and credit card debt, which grew by 2.6% and 3.3%, respectively.

For the most part, 2016 was a good news financial story. Strong performance in the stock market buoyed Canadian investments.

The biggest markets experienced strong real estate appreciation.

And many Canadians increased their saving rates. This is the wealthiest Canadians as a whole have ever been.

Q:

Didn’t consumer debt among Canadian households outpace their income in 2016? That doesn’t sound like very good news.

A: It’s true that, nationally, total debt levels grew at a slightly higher rate than previous years, increasing 4.4% to $139,387 per household in 2016. Meanwhile, household income grew only one per cent to $94,365. But consumer SEptember 2017

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debt, which rose a modest 2.6% to $39,551, accounted for far less of the total debt increase compared to mortgage debt, which jumped 5.1% to $99,836, underscoring a small shift to lower interest rate debt products. The 13.2% rise in real estate values was jaw-dropping and completely eclipsed the increase in mortgage debt. In other words, mortgage debt grew, but not nearly as much as real estate values and that’s a good sign as it adds to net real estate equity.

Q:

In terms of wealth distribution in Canada, did the rich get richer?

A: Yes. WealthScapes 2017 data show the rich getting richer, with the gap widening between rich and poor. EA analysts broke the national data into five wealth tiers to assess the relative finances of different segments of the population. Although Canadians in general became richer in 2016, not all benefitted equally and disparities in household net worth grew more pronounced.

In the highest wealth quintile of neighbourhoods, net worth grew by 14.1% to $1,790,588, thanks to the strong performance of real estate and the stock market. But in the bottom quintile, net worth grew 7.5% to $206,765, a healthy rate but just over half that of the highest quintile. Active savers and households less willing to take on high debt loads contributed to increased wealth in the bottom quintile. But with little real estate or stock holdings, households in the bottom quintile did not benefit from increases in those assets.

Vancouver - Households in the Greater Vancouver Area posted an average net worth of $1,217,630 in 2016, the highest in the country. Its net worth growth rate of 19.4% was in large part the result of household real estate values increasing by nearly 21.8%—much higher than the national average of 13.2%. Overall, the city experienced growth across most neighbourhoods, with some of the sharpest increases occurring in North Vancouver and the southeastern area of Vancouver proper along the Kingsway. However, some areas around downtown’s Gastown neighbourhood experienced net worth declines. (Source: Environics Analytics, WealthScapes 2017)

Q:

In last year’s edition of WealthScapes, the three wealthiest provinces were British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta. Are they still tops?

A: Yes, the three wealthiest provinces were the same as they’ve been for years: British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta. The average net worth of top-ranked B.C. households grew 17.2% to $1,024,042, making B.C. the first province of millionaires. Secondplace Ontario rose 14.2% to $918,493 and third-place Alberta increased 9.6% to $869,631.

The drivers behind these rising Continued on page 27 SEptember 2017

Toronto - Debt-to-asset ratios declined slightly throughout Toronto and its suburbs between 2015 and 2016, and the city average of about 17% was below the 18% national average. Areas with higher debt loads include the newer developments in the downtown core and the eastern part of Markham and Scarborough. Households in wealthy areas of Toronto—like the Bridal Path, Forest Hill, the Kingsway, Lawrence Park and Rosedale—traditionally have kept their debt levels in check, and this did not change in 2016.

(Source: Environics Analytics, WealthScapes 2017) DMN.ca ❰

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Feature

What you need to know about the future of e-commerce apps

By Kristen Herhold

T

he hard part about investing in app technology is knowing where to spend your dollars, deciphering if a new feature is a trend or a long-term asset and understanding your audience well enough to know what they want. Although we don’t have a crystal ball to see what the future of e-commerce will look like, we do know that when it comes to apps, consumers want innovative features.

Clutch, a B2B ratings and reviews firm, recently conducted a survey of 505 e-commerce app users. The report found that consumers seek app features that go beyond browsing and buying products. Here is a summary of the most notable findings: Top e-commerce app functions The concepts of e-commerce

apps are simple—relatable, usable, practical—but the execution is not—determining functionality, customization and personalization, software architecture. There are several important e-commerce app functions that consumers want which you should consider as you either start to develop your app or continue to make it scalable.

Discounts and rewards There’s nothing new about consumers wanting a deal, but how apps are doing this is quite innovative. For example, Walgreens offers Balance Rewards, where users can earn points based on their health and exercise habits.

The iPhone Health app can track miles that are covered by walking, running or cycling, and every 1,000 points earned is $1 off a

future purchase at Walgreens.

Dynamic pricing is another option for larger retail chains or companies with a spread-out customer base. Nik Sanghvi, head of U.S. sales and business development at Robosoft Technologies, said “there are already quite a few companies, including Amazon, which offer dynamic pricing based on the ZIP codes from where the items are being purchased or are being shipped to. There are many more possible segmentation layers based on user criteria, and this can bring the best deals possible for pricesensitive customers, as well as allow companies to sell items at a higher price for people who are less price-sensitive, thus making sales possible for both categories and maximizing revenues.”

Augmented reality (AR) AR is when shoppers at a store receive real-time notifications about deals, customer reviews and other information to enhance their decision-making process. In the Clutch survey, only about 54% of customers said that they would use this feature, but nearly 60% of consumers want e-commerce apps that personalize the in-store experience. These two tools, however, go hand-in-hand.

“The AR kit is going to be a really big deal,” said Dan Healy, chief operating officer at Prolific Interactive. “It’s a great way to show how the mobile experience can literally exist in real life and help drive confidence to the user that the purchase they are making is a sound one. It takes a lot of risk out.” ❱ DMN.ca

For example, customers on Wayfair’s app can view how furnishings and décor would look like in their homes through WayfairView via the smartphone’s camera. Customers can virtually see the product in their own environment before committing to a purchase.

Interaction Drew Papadeas, vice president of sales and marketing at Dom & Tom, believes that apps have an advantage over traditional emails and websites because of the customer interaction and conversations that are possible: “There is added accessibility, given that a user’s phone is always near them... With a mobile device, brands can push out information and engage users proactively, using things like targeted messaging based on users’ bio-behavior or what the weather is outside… It’s less about the visible interface and more about the interact being used to put messages in front of the consumer at the right time and place.”

Three e-commerce mistakes to avoid If an app is hard to work, it won’t be used. We’ve all downloaded apps only to use them once and delete them later. Here are some ways to ensure that your app is on the right track.

Avoid friction “You can have all these features in an app, but if it’s harder for me to place an order in the app than just picking up the phone or going into the store, the app is going to fail and I’m not going to use it,” Andrew Gazdecki, CEO of Bizness Apps, said.

Don’t think your business is too small for an app “I read an article recently that stated that Dominos is putting pizza places out of business because they’re able to offer convenience with their mobile Continued on page 27 SEptember 2017

THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MAGAZINE ISSUE 3 • 2017

The

People

Issue

❯❯ Transat soars and saves with new contact centre operations ❯❯ Why you need to train your outsourced staff ❯❯ “STOP TYPING AT ME IN ALL CAPS” ❯❯ How to become a digitally connected contact centre ❯❯ Want to fix CX? Address agent pain! ❯❯ Five ways interaction analytics can improve customer experience ❯❯ Why AI will enhance call centre jobs ❯❯ The 80/20 principle

The People Issue

Transat soars and saves with new contact centre operations

By Patrice Tanguay

T

ransat’s recent migration to an advanced, flexible contact centre solution from Genesys saved the company $1.8 million over five years with a single administration, while enabling a more consistent customer experience and improved employee efficiency.

Whether Transat should make the switch from our antiquated contact centre system to a new all-in-one solution was something I studied deeply. As the division manager for telecommunications at Transat, my team began the search with an open mind. We wanted to see what new technology was out there to support our service goals and provide operational value.

Transat at a contact centre crossroad Transat, A.T., Inc. is a global tourism leader that specializes in holiday travel, including air transportation, accommodations and travel packaging. We recently celebrated our 30th anniversary. We’re headquartered in Montreal, Canada, we have more than 5,000 employees worldwide and 2.3 million clients. Transat serves over 50 destinations and maintains a fleet of 40 aircraft.

Our customers expect the best from us, but we were limited by our legacy Avaya contact centre infrastructure.

Transat was struggling to provide consistent, seamless service across our contact centres. With locations in Canada, England, Scotland, France and the Netherlands, each Transat contact centre was siloed with its own server, hindering agents’ ability to collaborate with each other across contact centres.

Our outdated infrastructure was also preventing the consolidated reporting view we needed to make better, data-driven business decisions. Because of these solution limitations, our information technology (IT) administration also had significant challenges upgrading and integrating new channels and applications. We couldn’t provide the differentiated experience necessary to meet evolving business needs and customer expectations.

To prepare for the future, I knew Transat needed to consolidate its service operations and simplify administration. This led to a very important decision.

We could upgrade our existing Avaya systems, which would require more servers and the need to undertake the lengthy process of onboarding more licenses. Or we could migrate to a more advanced contact centre solution.

Considering our existing maintenance costs, integration challenges and ongoing need to support new digital channels and applications, we made the move to evaluate new contact centre solutions.

The search for a technology partner 2 | contact management

After reviewing the capabilities of several leading vendors, Transat chose the PureConnect multichannel solution from Genesys to replace our existing Avaya contact centre systems.

The simplicity of the all-in-one solution offered new capabilities and channels—all through a single portal for administration. The IT department could add new functionality quickly without time-consuming and costly integrations, gaining the flexibility to meet evolving business needs. The platform also provided advanced routing capabilities to create one large agent pool, offer differentiated service and launch a follow-the-sun service model.

The Genesys team proved to be a great partner. They were very cooperative throughout our evaluation process and made us feel secure in our decision.

Improving work flow and service capabilities Prior to deploying the PureConnect solution, Genesys provided Transat with the opportunity to participate in sandbox testing, so we could assess various functions of their new solution. Genesys continued to work closely with us throughout the deployment, onboarding 575 service representatives and 2,300 business users. The migration went smoothly with service levels remaining consistent throughout the project.

Since the replacement of our legacy contact centre systems, we unified our contact centres and centralized our interactive voice response (IVR) system with a single point of entry in both English and French. We dramatically increased the consistency of our customer experience and now can reach out to customers proactively on their channel of choice to provide travel updates and other notifications. Agent satisfaction also has increased by working with the new desktop client.

Our real-time interaction data and performance metrics are instantly consolidated and correlated from all channels across their global service organization, giving us better insights to make data-driven business decisions and increase operational efficiency. The result has been measurable improvements to our work flow, increased consistency of our customer experience and cost savings of more than $1.8 million (CAD) over five years. With PureConnect, we can also leverage additional business intelligence tools and manipulate data however we need.

Success with continued innovation Transat continues to work with Genesys to maximize the value of our contact centre solution. This includes an upcoming deployment of Salesforce CRM, adding new features to stay ahead of the latest digital and mobile trends, and improving our process automation. The open platform also gives us the application program interface (API) flexibility to develop other hooks and connectors to our backend to further increase the value to our solution.

As we move into the future with PureConnect, we’re confident we’ll meet or exceed our customer requirements in every detail. We like that PureConnect is available both on-premise and in the cloud, giving us options for the future. We’re excited to respond to our customers’ rapidly changing needs in new and better ways, while seeing our satisfaction grow internally with an all-in-one solution.

Patrice Tanguay is the division manager of telecommunications at Transat.

He has 20 years of experience in telecommunications administration and management. He can be contacted at Patrice.Tanguay@transat.com.

Issue 3 • 2017

The People Issue

Why you need to train your outsourced staff

By Dolly Konzelmann

2) Knowledge and skill

5) Quality onboarding

mployee training not only delivers individual benefits, but will promote positive outcomes for the company as well. However, should you train outsourced staff just as though they were full-time employees? Is there a need for any training investment with out-sourced staff? The answer is yes! At the end of the day these individuals may not be directly employed by your company, but they are representing you when out in the field and on the phones.

Training, and especially ongoing training, is a key area for debate in many companies. The number one reason employers choose not to train their staff or work on their professional development is funding. How can a company justify the cost of training its employees? Simple—training along with professional development will further build your team’s skills and provide them with the tools to effectively and efficiently handle their everyday jobs.

Choosing to outsource your trainers can quickly expand your team by adding qualified and experienced talent.

There is an infinite list of why we should train our outsourced staff. Here are our top five reasons:

Generally, when an outsourced staff are contracted they are given a role description, company overview and training. To retain knowledge, skills need to be practiced and refreshed on a regular basis so elements aren’t forgotten, it is imperative to staff development. Staff that know more can bring more to the table.

We often hire staff or outsourced staff based on their credentials. We than leave it up to them to sink or swim within their role, rather than providing the training necessary to help them succeed.

1) Industry advancements

If your outsourced staff know what is expected of them and are properly trained, productivity will increase.

Training will improve performance and add both flexibility and efficiency to the work day. You can cross-train staff to be capable in more than one aspect of the business.

E

The industry is forever changing and it is imperative that our staff develop and transform with it. New technology is developing at an increasingly fast rate. It is near impossible to keep up with all the ongoing developments, but we can do our best to train our outsourced staff on the new programs and methods made easier through technological advancements.

Issue 3 • 2017

3) Promote job satisfaction Through continued investment from the company, staff will generally have a much higher sense of job satisfaction, which overall can improve their motivation towards their work and contributions towards the company. Training will help shape your team into a powerful machine, with all parts working as one.

4) Increase job productivity

If companies want to stay competitive, it’s time to get serious about training and investing in our staff and outsourced staff. Otherwise employees will begin to lose interest, feel disengaged and feel as though their company does not care for their professional development, in more ways than one.

Training will not only retain staff, but save companies the cost and headache of re-hiring due to high turnover.

Dolly Konzelmann is the president of Customer Service Professionals Network (CSPN). Working with clients throughout North America and abroad over the last 20 years CSPN has created and delivered over 25 world renowned training programs including customer service to leadership. CSPN has helped numerous contact centres optimize their staff, process and technology.

contact management | 3

The People Issue

“STOP TYPING AT ME IN ALL CAPS!” Seven tips for handling irate clients via omnichannel customer service

By Mike Aoki

O

mnichannel customer care is like “doing customer service onstage” says Nygel Weishar, director - channel management, digital & contact management at CIBC. That is because social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook allow anyone to view your interactions with customers.

What are the implications of that? Omnichannel agents need to be more diplomatic. They need to think not only of their immediate customer but also how their responses impact other people viewing their conversation online.

As Weishar points out “social customer service sets the standard” as far as how current and potential customers view your organization. At its best, omnichannel customer care is about fixing a customer’s problem. At a minimum, it is about damage control and trying not to let negative messages damage your brand. That becomes even more important when dealing with irate customers online.

The following are seven tips for handling irate customers in an omnichannel environment.

1) Know when to take it offline.

One of the greatest challenges of providing omnichannel care is the need to protect customer privacy. Imagine you are a customer calling your credit card company. What is the first thing an agent does on that call? They ask for an account number and password to authenticate your identity. However, you cannot ask for that on a Facebook post because the whole world will see the customer’s answer, including their password. So if confidential data is involved, redirect the customer to a phone conversation with one of your agents.

spelling, grammar and vague word choices. To ensure you are getting the right information from customers, ask clarifying questions.

4) Emotional intelligence matters even more on social media than on phone calls.

Help your agents “read between the lines” of a customer’s writing.

Lolacher notes: “With a traditional phone call, you get all the other communication cues: tone, inflection, volume. Each of these allows the service agent to better prepare the next thing they should say, or not say. Being able to listen beyond the words being used is extremely helpful in addressing concerns and relieving anger.”

Weishar adds: “Understand what you are writing as an agent and how that can be misunderstood.” For example, other people reading your customer service tweet may not know what was said in previous tweets. So, be careful not to type things that can be misconstrued out of context.

5) Multitasking is wonderful for simple transactions and awful for complex ones.

This is the opposite of point number one. “Though social is growing as a service platform, in my experience most irate customers aren’t repeating the question/concern but rather using it to highlight their anger around their customer experience,” says Russel Lolacher, professional speaker, consultant and customer relationship advocate at www. russellolacher.com. So, be prepared for customers to say “but, I already talked to someone over the phone and they couldn’t help me!” Let your customer know you want to help them, but need a private conversation to authenticate their identity so you can help them with their confidential issue.

Agents need to know when to focus on just one customer at a time. While one of the biggest selling points about social is the ability to handle three interactions at once (versus phone agents that only handle one phone call at a time) omnichannel agents may need to put their sole focus on an irate customer during that interaction. When someone is angry, clumsy word choices or misreading of the customer’s message can cause them to become even more irate.

You would never put an angry phone caller on hold to take another call simultaneously. Do not do that with an irate social media interaction either.

3) Frequently ask for clarification and confirmation during social media interactions.

6) Know the rules. Every platform is different.

You can use social media to help customers with nonconfidential issues. However, even if your omnichannel agents are excellent written communicators, there can still be challenges. Remember how telephone agents face challenges such as language barriers and accents? Well, omnichannel agents face challenges such as customer

“Many agents treat each platform the same way” rather than understanding each platform is unique, says Russel. “The language can be similar but structure and engagement can be very different.”

2) Be aware that customers may have already tried traditional telephone customer service.

That is why they are venting on social media.

4 | contact management

He adds that “different channels should be treated differently. This can be done through creating scenarios unique to each channel to understand best practices.” He stresses the importance of having agents use each channel in their own life since, “practitioners understand better how to engage and connect with customers, much like they do with friends online.” Weishar points out that “each social channel has its own acronyms and style.” So, coach your agents to switch their social style and writing style to suit each channel. That could mean being more personable on Facebook and more concise on Twitter.

7) Omnichannel customer service and traditional telephone customer service are both about helping people.

Excellent communication skills, emotional intelligence and a positive attitude apply to ALL customer service channels. Treat your customers well, no matter which channel they choose to use.

As a final thought, Russel Lolacher suggests looking at any irate customer as an “opportunity to build a relationship. If we have a fight or misunderstanding with a friend, it is rarely the end of the relationship.” He recommends viewing an interaction with an irate customer as “just a stumble in a long relationship” no matter what channel they use.

Mike Aoki is the president of Reflective Keynotes Inc. (www.reflectivekeynotes. com ), a Canadian training company that helps contact centres improve their sales and customer retention results.

A contact centre expert, Mike has been interviewed by the Customer Experience Show and the Globe and Mail. He serves on the Advisory Council of GTACC (the Greater Toronto Area Contact Centre association www.gtacc.ca ) and was Master of Ceremonies for four of their Annual Conferences. He was also chosen

by ICMI.com as one of the “Top 50 Customer Service Thought Leaders on Twitter” in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Issue 3 • 2017

The People Issue

How to become a digitally connected contact centre

By Holly Simmons

T

oday’s contact centre leaders know that a great customer experience is key to increasing satisfaction and loyalty as well as ultimately improving a company’s bottom line. Most service strategies to date have focused on customer engagement improvements such as expanding beyond phone calls to additional channels such as the web, social media and email. While organizations should continue to focus on engagement strategies, a huge market shift is emerging to drive what Forrester calls a “tip from experiences to operations.” Moving ahead, contact centres will need to become centres of operational excellence to address everything behind the scenes and beyond the front end experience to provide the quality of service that customers demand.

What’s changed that is causing this tip? Many companies are becoming digital businesses where products are becoming services and digital technology is used to establish and maintain a relationship with the customer. As an example, Westpac Bank embarked on a transformation journey, first by investing in mobile experiences for their customers and, second, by digitizing back-end processes that deliver the services being requested by customers. Like Westpac Bank, customer service leaders must extend their vision beyond engagement.

To avoid the pitfalls, organizations can focus on three strategies for digital business that take the contact centre to the next level: 1. Customer service should be effortless and automated. Customers expect to access information when and how they want. By providing selfservice, automating workflows and using artificial intelligence to eliminate manual prioritization and assignment of cases, contact centres empower customers to help themselves while reducing case loads for agents to focus on higher level work. A Deloitte survey reveals that 83% of respondents expect higher use of web self-services going forward. Another study also revealed that effective customer service teams are 36% more likely to offer self-service options. Portals, service catalogues, knowledge bases and communities are some of the Issue 3 • 2017

key self-service technologies that can provide flexible and easy options for customers to get the information they need.

2. Connect customer service to the rest of the business.

Too often, customer service operates independently from other parts of the business with little collaboration with, or support from, other departments. By making customer service the primary focus across the organization and taking a “team sport” approach, everyone, not just customer service teams, takes ownership for resolving customer issues and requests.

Additionally, connecting customer service processes and systems across the company to support this closed-loop approach is necessary to ensure root cause resolutions and continuous improvement. The end result is an improvement in the quality of service. A report looking at customer service programs throughout the U.S. found that high performing customer service programs are more collaborative and more likely to enlist the help of various parts of the organization when working on a customer issue. By utilizing modern customer service systems to connect customers to the best qualified person or department, organizations are setting themselves apart from competitors.

3. Move from reactive to proactive service. Customer service is not always about problems and issues, it’s also about anticipating customer needs and being proactive. Taking advantage of the Internet of Things to monitor customers’ products and services enables contact centre teams to know about issues before customers call. Using modern technology such as performance analytics, organizations can better follow trends and optimize services, workflows or cost structures.

Additionally, by monitoring conversations through customer service communities organizations can find out what it is customers want and from there determine what changes, if any, need to be made to how services are delivered.

Customer service organizations can no longer delay the changes needed to keep up with current customer demands required for digital business. By modernizing customer service systems and processes, customer service leaders will see immediate changes and overall improvement to the organization.

When systems, people and workflows are connected, great customer service is no longer a dream, it’s a guarantee.

Holly Simmons is senior director, product marketing, customer service management, at ServiceNow.

contact management | 5

The People Issue

Want to fix CX? Address agent pain!

By Anand Subramaniam

W

hat’s worse: “No results found” or 100 search results that don’t solve your problem? Sixty-three per cent of consumers surveyed by Forrester Consulting said that self-service capabilities offered by businesses had stagnated or declined in efficacy.

Human-assisted service can be equally painful.

Recently, when I needed something fixed through my home warranty company, I had to contact the company multiple times. Each time, I got a different answer. In one instance, I had to walk the agent through my contract to show her that I was entitled to something. To complicate matters even more, I got different answers when I used the company’s call centre, digital and field touchpoints. The company had failed on multiple counts: omnichannel consistency and context as well as agent knowledgeability.

Research on this is clear: Forrester’s 2016 U.S. Customer Experience (CX) Index Report revealed that consumers said that only one per cent of U.S. businesses deliver excellent customer service. The same report found that the state of CX remained stagnant among Canadian businesses, and that none of the UK companies received an excellent score.

No wonder a new phenomenon called “tech support rage” is commonplace nowadays, per a recent New York Times article (in my view, it can dwarf road rage in its intensity!).

What could be the root cause of this phenomenon? We decided to find out.

We first asked 5,000 individuals through Forrester Consulting what caused the most frustration during their service interactions with organizations across multiple industries: retail, communication service providers, banking and financial services, property and casualty insurance, health insurance, health care providers, utilities and government. Allowed to pick up to two options, consumers cited the following as their biggest pain points: 1. Different customer service agents give different answers (41%); 2. Customer service agents don’t know the answer (34%); and 3. I can’t find an answer on the company’s website (31%).

Agent hurdles Following the trail of CX pain, we set out to understand why contact centre agents were not able to deliver knowledgeable and consistent customer service. We asked more than 2,000 agents about their biggest hurdle to answering questions/resolving problems/executing a service process when the customer is on the line. Not quite surprisingly, the top agent pain points virtually mirrored those of consumers and the hurdles faced by Canadian contact centre agents were not very different from those faced by agents worldwide, as shown in the accompanying table.

6 | contact management

Effective KM addresses the needs of both CX and AX Fortunately, there is a common thread across all these hurdles and it is the fact that they can be addressed by a smart, omnichannel knowledge management (KM) system that can deliver fast, accurate and consistent answers, regardless of touchpoint— voice, digital, in-person, etc. If you’re thinking of implementing such a system, here are some best practices that can help you succeed with your KM initiative: • Start with the 80-20 Pareto principle, developing answers for the most frequently asked questions.

• Go beyond just documents and content to make answers easily findable by providing a variety of search options based on keywords, natural language, faceted search, etc.

• Leverage artificial intelligence (AI)-based reasoning to walk the customer or agent step by step to answers for complex questions or guide them through service processes.

• Deploy the same consistent knowledge across all customer touchpoints.

• Make sure to address people, process and culture issues so the organization is committed to a sustained KM program for customer service excellence.

Done right, KM delivers transformational benefits such as simultaneous improvements in first-contact resolution (FCR), average handle time (AHT), average speed to answer (ASA) and speed to competency for agents. For example, a telco improved FCR by 37% and

reduced agent training time by half, while boosting NPS by 20% with eGain Knowledge and AI. A financialservices company reduced customer complaints by 45%, resolution time by 80% and compliance by 30% with the same solution.

In fact, many companies have experienced benefits specific to their industry as well. Here are some examples: • Banking and financial services firms and health care companies have improved compliance with industry regulations that apply to customer service.

• Telecom companies have reduced unwarranted handset returns and exchanges through better knowledge-enabled problem resolution on their websites or through their contact centres.

• Manufacturing companies have reduced unwarranted field service truck rolls the same way, while improving first visit resolution by leveraging knowledge to recommend the right spare parts and tools to make their first visit fruitful.

In short, with a successful KM initiative, excellent CX and AX (agent experience) won’t be an elusive goal; it will be a reality!

Anand Subramaniam is the SVP of worldwide marketing for eGain Corporation, the leading provider of cloud customer-engagement solutions, guided by knowledge and AI. His experience spans industry leaders, SaaS startups and growing companies with previous tenures at companies like Oracle, Lotus (now IBM) and Intel. Anand holds an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley and an MSME from the University of Rhode Island.

Hurdle

Worldwide

Canada

Finding the right answer to customer questions

26%

29%

Different systems/info sources give different answers for same question

25%

26%

Hopping from one application/window to another

20%

17%

Hard to keep up with all the new info/changes I need to know about

14%

17%

Other

15%

10% Issue 3 • 2017

The People Issue

Five ways interaction analytics can improve customer experience

By Aviad Abiri

I

n 1876, the customer service industry changed forever with a revolutionary piece of technology: the telephone. Since then, customer service professionals have become dependent on their ability to understand and react to the voice of the customer. But in today’s connected and digital society, the definition of “the customer voice” is much more expansive. Customers are interacting with companies through a variety of mediums, including surveys, emails, social media, SMS, chat and audio interactions. Every single interaction is an opportunity for companies to improve their overall customer service and yet the thought of mining through each individual interaction can feel extremely daunting for service providers.

The influx of data doesn’t have to be overwhelming, so long as customer service providers rely on intelligent solutions to mine through the multiple data sources.

Contact centres also need to look for analytics solutions that will analyze and operationalize customer interaction data in a way that allows businesses to be proactive in their customer engagement approach.

Interaction analytics help to improve the overall customer service experience and can also assist companies in advancing their bottom line. By 2020, Gartner analysts predict that smart personalization engines used to recognize customer intent will enable digital businesses to increase their profits by up to 15%. With the many challenges facing customer service professionals today, here are four ways interaction analytics can help service providers improve their operations, enhance customer engagement and increase their bottom line.

Reduce churn Customer retention is crucial to business success and it can be difficult for companies to pinpoint exactly why a customer discontinued their services. In the past, companies would need to analyze multiple reports to understand churn, getting at the reason customers were leaving. Now, technology will proactively identify these customers and their behavioral trends based on the incoming data. With interaction analytics, companies can now spend less time trying to understand the problem and instead focus on where these trends exist, working to address and even preempt the issues.

Increase overall sales effectiveness Interaction analytics technology can help businesses identify trends in how sales offers are resonating with customers. The use of neural networks is particularly Issue 3 • 2017

effective here as they can scan a database of audio and text conversations between customers and service agents on a variety of platforms, including calls, chats, emails and surveys. Neural networks create word-level transcriptions of these conversations, perform phonetic indexing and provide customer sentiment scores. What this means is that companies can quickly and accurately pinpoint specific words and phrases that are repeated and detect triggers for customer dissatisfaction in order to understand customer issues and reactions to different types of sales pitches, which will ultimately help them enhance their sales impact.

agent interaction gives companies the ability to evaluate their staff and provide coaching and management training that will help them be more successful.

Adhere to compliance regulations In the U.S. and internationally, governments have implemented regulatory guidelines around customer service standards.

For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FFC) adopted federal standards that are aimed at improving the quality of customer service rendered by cable operators. These address a variety of operational requirements, including

By 2020, smart personalization engines will enable digital businesses to increase their profits by up to 15%.

Improve cost management It is important for contact centres to manage the cost of their operations by examining customer interactions.

For example, how long does it take staff members to handle each customer and how many of them can resolve an issue during their first call?

An analysis of these statistics can help companies to reduce call volume by resolving systematic issues.

Enhance employee performance A contact centre is often a complex management challenge. With many tasks underway and multiple desktop applications in use, it can be difficult to judge employee effectiveness, measure true handle times or identify process inefficiencies. Having a platform that can analyze every

telephone availability for customers and billing requirements. By using interaction analytics, companies can more quickly identify, analyze and respond to customer issues, allowing them to remain compliant.

The telephone may have changed the customer service game in the 1800s, but today contact centres must rely on technology that offers interaction analytics to revolutionize their business strategy and improve their customer engagement tactics.

Aviad Abiri, VP, portfolio sales enablement, is responsible for equipping all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with NICE’s customer stakeholders, across the entire range of our portfolio offerings and at each stage of the customer problemsolving life cycle.

contact management | 7

The People Issue

Why AI will enhance call centre jobs AI can take away the stress of CSR jobs and reduce turnover rates

By John Forrester

W

ith their unlimited patience and ability to find information more quickly than the human brain, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are being used to handle routine customer service functions. They appear on web screens as chat boxes, they provide automated answers on voice calls and they direct customers through the myriad of response chains to a resolution—cheaper, faster and better than humans.

AI should be a harbinger of good news. But instead of celebrating, the dark cloud that looms over AI is what will happen to all of the customer service reps (CSR) that AI puts out of work—for good?

Progress creates opportunities If we have learned anything since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, it is that whenever machines were invented to automate tedious jobs, those jobs were rarely eliminated. With the exception of the telephone and elevator operators, the advent of machines improved quality, increased our expectations and transformed the market by creating more opportunities, rather than less.

8 | contact management

Issue 3 • 2017

The People Issue Why AI works for customer service Companies are driven by mandates to improve customer satisfaction rates, reduce customer support costs, and enable 24x7 engagement with their customers.

Consumers are increasingly demanding quick answers and faster resolution to their problems. A study from NewVoiceMedia found that companies lose more than $62 billion due to poor customer service. With so much at stake, organizations need a customer service department that is responsive, efficient and committed to putting the customer first. Yet, many organizations are struggling to keep call centre employees in their jobs, with turnover rates hovering between 21% and 53% percent.

Companies lose more than $62 billion due to poor customer service.

The job of a CSR can be emotionally draining, as they try to resolve problems for sometimes angry customers.

In addition to being emotionally draining, the job can be monotonous and tedious. AI has the potential to change that by empowering CSRs with better information and the ability to make the job of dealing with customers less stressful, more enjoyable and more meaningful.

Why AI is suited for customer service AI does far more than understand language; AI can process sentiment, tone and inflection. Natural language processing (NLP) enables the bot to understand what a customer is trying to say and can respond with an intelligent, useful answer. AI bots can do this whether the words are spoken or printed, even if there are typos, improper grammar or misspellings. If it doesn’t understand you, it will ask for clarification. More importantly, AI is designed to learn—the more it is used, the more insights it gathers and the more useful it becomes.

High-touch AI AI can think like a human, but it is not a human. While businesses can utilize AI to handle routine transactions, there will still be times when customers will expect, even demand, to talk to a well-trained CSR. Sometimes, a customer just needs an answer quickly. They’re not interested in carrying on a conversation—they just need a problem solved. Virtual assistants can listen for keywords or phrases to identify these inquiries and can resolve these problems with a chatbot or guide customers through an online FAQ form. AI can step in to do this job for customers quickly, freeing CSRs from the monotonous aspects of their jobs so that they can focus on more engaging and exciting interactions with the customer.

Many businesses are finding ways to use AI to work collaboratively with CSRs, supporting them and enhancing their ability to gather information from the database faster so that they can do their jobs better.

Empower your CSRs with knowledge A survey by eGain revealed that one of the biggest frustrations among CSRs is their inability to find the information they need to resolve customer issues.

Issue 3 • 2017

Searching the database takes a frustratingly long time and sometimes involves switching screens to pull up the appropriate information. AI-powered semantic search technology can direct agents to the heart of content instead of giving multiple options to the searches. In addition to giving the CSR information much faster, a bot can simultaneously present critical historical data about the customer.

This supported-AI approach gives CSRs access to information, taking away one of the most frustrating aspects of the job. Plus, AI provides this information in the context of the customer’s previous interactions, so that they can respond to the customer appropriately. This is a great solution for a company that has a high number of SKUs, where the number of questions can be endless.

Emotionally intelligent customer service AI can help CSRs manage the inherent emotional difficulties with fielding an endless stream of calls from frustrated customers. People are sensitive creatures—if the CSR is tired, has low energy and is aggravated from the last situation they dealt with, the customer is going to hear that over the phone. Natural language processing (NLP) can make dealing with these situations much less exasperating. In a matter of seconds AI can gather information about the caller’s tone, vocabulary, sentiment and even silences to let the agent know how the customer is feeling. Providing this insight is an excellent way to help the CSR react appropriately so they can meet the customer’s needs with more empathy.

Strengths of the agent One of the strongest advantages of AI is its ability to gather information that helps everyone work more efficiently and improve the overall customer experience for customers and employees. With every call, the bot collects more information and gets smarter and can do a better job meeting customer expectations.

This information can be used to help identify the CSR’s strengths, knowledge, skills and even current emotional state. Over time, all of this information can be utilized by the bot to route calls to the specific CSR who is appropriately trained and skilled to handle them. This ability

to match emotions and expertise is an important part of the customer experience, helping the customer feel understood and valuable.

Improve customer service The more data an AI-enabled device collects, the more it can learn—and at a faster rate. Soon, the bot will have a history of strategic data that reveals trends surrounding the common service issues and concerns that prompt customers to contact a company. A company can then use this information to proactively eliminate many of these problems before they call customer service.

One of the biggest frustrations among CSRs is their inability to find the information they need.

The bottom line With its ability to interpret communication, assimilate an organization’s data and quickly pull up the pertinent information much faster than humans, AI can take some of the repetitive, monotonous tasks away from customer service agents. When used in collaboration to support CSRs, AI not only improves customer response times but also helps to increase job satisfaction among employees. But more importantly, giving CSRs more autonomy gives them more power and control over their jobs and that leads to a more fulfilling work experience.

John Forrester is the chief marketing officer at Inbenta, leading all aspects of global brand, demand generation, digital marketing, advertising, PR and events. His previous roles include leadership positions at Workato, Xero and RingCentral. He has held marketing management positions at VMware, YouSendIt, Samsung and Microsoft.

contact management | 9

The Consultant’s Corner

The 80/20 principle Naturally occurring phenomenon the key to avoiding an omnichannel problem

By Emily Nielsen

I

f you’re purchasing or deploying an omnichannel solution then consider this a sort of public service announcement to steer you clear of a common, customer-experience-impacting problem. An issue specifically affecting organizations who are trying to jump from basic call centre functionality to a full-blown omnichannel environment—in a single leap.

What’s more, if you’re feeling confused or overwhelmed by the array of channel choices available to you, how you should use all these channels and how you should deploy them, then you can also consider this article as a rather unusual—yet very effective—antidote to clear away this technological complexity. So, take a deep breath and relax.

I’ve got answers.

Now having said that, for it to take full effect I must ask you, momentarily, to suspend your beliefs and what you’ve been marketed to believe about the reasons why you should jump into deploying and unifying all of these “new” channels.

You see, we’re going to step out of the marketing hype and hoopla and go strolling through the realm of one of nature’s laws: a strange phenomenon occurring everywhere in nature—even within your very own contact centre! And I believe understanding and working with this phenomenon is the key to alleviating much confusion and avoiding one of the most common pitfalls of deploying these numerous channels.

Sound interesting? If you’re nodding your head in agreement, then let’s begin by calling to your attention what I believe to be one of the biggest perils in making a sudden jump from where you are now into a brandspanking-new omnichannel solution.

Here’s what you’ve got to understand: Many organizations—pressured by competition and marketing hype urging them toward using and unifying all these channels—have a dangerous desire to immediately deploy every single channel at once.

In doing so, these organizations are trying to leap from a basic call centre environment (often just email and voice) to a full-blown omnichannel configuration all at once.

Here’s the danger in doing just that: In their haste to deploy every channel, bell and whistle, doodad and gadget, it’s easy to overlook the more critical and more important aspect—the new business processes required to effectively and efficiently manage each and every channel.

So what happens when you try to take this leap from “zero to hero”? Well, organizations often expose themselves to poor customer service levels. Why? Because they lack the required backend processes to properly handle the prospects and customers coming through these many points of entry. These “half-baked” deployed channels, lacking the right processes and people to deal 10 | contact management

with these new and numerous “doorways” to the outer world, leave prospects and customers underwhelmed by the apparent lack of service and competency.

You see, despite what marketers want you to believe, your goal shouldn’t be to deploy—at least initially—every channel, bell and whistle engineered under the sun because rather than improving the customer experience you risk ruining it.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering, how should you approach your deployment to avoid this problem?

Well, the answer is contained inside of a strange (yet profitable) naturally occurring phenomenon discovered by an Italian economist who studied wealth.

Here’s his story: Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), while studying the yields of bean fields in Italy, discovered that 20% of the bean plants yielded 80% of the peas. Also, he discovered that 20% of Italian’s owned 80% of the country’s wealth. And, oddly, he repeatedly discovered this pattern popping up in nearly everything else in nature.

This naturally occurring phenomenon was coined the “80/20 principle” and it works out like this: 80% of what you get comes from 20% of that you do—small effort, big reward. And 20% of what you get comes from the other 80% that you do—big effort, small reward.

And that’s just scratching the surface because there’s an 80/20 inside of the top 20% (this is 80/202).

And an 80/20 inside of the top four per cent (this is 80/203). This is the “Law of the Vital Few.” Now knowing this, rather than getting swept away in the marketing buzz, I recommend that you make your channel decisions based on the Law of the Vital Few, simply because not all of your channels are created equal and your time and energy are finite.

Your main priority at this moment should be in deploying, developing and optimizing what you believe to be your

most rewarding channels for your ideal customers and your business. In the words of Perry Marshall, author of 80/20 Sales and Marketing, “The information age offers you more things to fix, optimize and pay attention to than you could possibly attend to in a lifetime. That’s why 80/ 20 has never been more important. You have reams of data spilling out… 24 hours a day.

If you pay attention to the wrong thing you could waste your entire life polishing turds.”

Bang on! And this is perhaps nowhere truer than in the contact centre industry. Here’s what I’m recommending you do: Adopt the three-step 80/20-approach I’ve used with numerous clients to reap the biggest rewards with the least amount of effort. Now grab a piece of paper and: 1. List all your channels; 2. Calculate the potential value of each channel; and 3. Apply your 80/20, 80/202 and 80/203 lenses and invest and deploy in your channels accordingly.

It’s really that simple. Do this little exercise and you’ll discover, like Vilfredo Pareto, that not all your channels are equal. In fact, based on this phenomenon and law of nature, there should only be a vital few.

Find these key channels—the money-makers—and perfect them by concentrating your time and energy where they matter most. And in doing so, you won’t risk opening your organization up to more points of entry than you can effectively manage.

Emily Nielsen launched Nielsen IT Consulting in 1999, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations achieve breakthrough results using contact centre and unified communication technologies. If you’d like such rewarding results you’re encouraged to contact Emily at enielsen@nielsenitconsulting.com or by calling 519-473-5373.

Issue 3 • 2017

// 27

Feature A decade of following the money: Environics Analytics releases WealthScapes 2017

Q:

fortunes differ, however. B.C. and Ontario remain the wealthiest provinces in large part because of sizzling real estate markets in Vancouver and Toronto. Albertans’ 9.6% rise in net worth came in below the national average, the result of real estate values having increased a relatively tepid 3.8% to $514,742; Alberta’s rise in net worth is mostly attributable to substantial growth in liquid assets—up 15.7% to $406,522— with equities accounting for much of that growth.

Are Canadian cities experiencing a housing bubble?

A: WealthScapes identified a run-up in housing prices in Vancouver, Toronto and Victoria, indicating likely housing bubbles.

In Vancouver, average real estate holdings appreciated 21.8% to $932,056. In Toronto, they rose 19.7% to $839,223. And in Victoria, they increased 19% to $669,814. While real estate growth remains strong in other markets—outside of Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria, real estate values rose by 9.1% in 2016, to $372,341—the skyrocketing growth in home values in Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria would seem difficult to sustain. And though provincial governments in B.C. and Ontario have taken steps to dampen demand, there was no sign of bubbles bursting as of the end of 2016.

Q:

Q:

Continued from page 15

Beyond the provinces, how did Canada’s largest markets fare in 2016?

A: In 2015, Vancouver became the first Canadian city to report average household net worth over $1 million. This year, three cities have joined that exclusive club: Toronto ($1,154,107), Calgary ($1,039,607) and Victoria ($1,055,468). But the nation’s fastest-growing cities in terms of wealth were different. After Vancouver, which posted the biggest percentage increase in wealth last year, up 19.4% to $1,217,630, four of the next five cities on the “booming money” list are located in the Golden Horseshoe: Oshawa households posted the second greatest percentage gain in wealth last year, with net worth increasing 17.3% to $852,689. Oshawa’s economy benefitted from real estate values that grew by 25%— nearly double the 13.2% national average—to $647,337. Next on the list is Toronto, which grew 17% to $1,154,107. And Victoria, fourth among the fastest wealth growth cities, realized a 15.4% gain and now households have an average net worth of $1,055,468.

Rounding out the fifth and sixth spots in net worth percentage gains are Hamilton, up 15.1% to $891,924, and St. Catharine’sNiagara, up 14.7% to $679,740.

SEptember 2017

How can direct marketers benefit from using WealthScapes 2017?

A: Direct marketers use WealthScapes to develop targeted campaigns to reach the right audience cost effectively.

WealthScapes is linked to postal codes and postal walks to guide the targeting of addressed and unaddressed mail, and for appending back to a customer data file. So it’s no surprise that investment firms use it to sell stocks, bonds and mutual funds by identifying high net worth postal codes. Data also can be aggregated to the market level to assist in mass media or out-of-home buys.

In this regard, WealthScapes helps direct marketers cut costs but, even better, it helps them track and measure the effectiveness of their strategies. Reviewing the WealthScapes profile of direct mail responders, for instance, yields great insights that can be used to fine tune future campaigns and anticipate future demand.

Q:

Can WealthScapes hint at how Canadians will fare financially in the future?

A: Although several oildependent provinces are still experiencing economic headwinds, WealthScapes data indicate that 2017 should produce continued strong growth. The economy shows

no signs of a recession or rapidly rising interest rates. In fact, 2017’s GDP growth is likely to be the best since the financial crisis. And while oil prices haven’t rebounded to pre-2014 levels, further significant declines are not expected. In the oil-rich provinces of Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador, households saw their net worth rise at moderate levels in 2016— by 5.1% and 4.7%, respectively— though well below Alberta’s impressive 9.6% gain. Given that the energy sector is notorious for its cyclical nature, up is always good.

apps and they’re looking for features that go beyond browsing and buying. Consumers want an easy, frictionless and entertaining experiences when using apps. The final question isn’t whether or not your business should have an e-commerce app; it’s what will your app do?

Kristen Herhold is a content writer and marketer at Clutch, a B2B research firm in the heart of Washington, DC. Connect with her on LinkedIn, or reach out with any questions, comments or concerns at kristen@clutch. com or 202-840-6690.

The top four reasons consumers use e-commerce apps:

What you need to know about the future of e-commerce apps

❯❯

Continued from page 16

❯❯

❯❯

app,” Gazdecki said. “The thing that small businesses need to realize is that this isn’t a fad... It’s something they need to implement in their business because their competition is eating away at them because they’re able to offer these powerful mobile solutions.”

❯❯

Innovative features consumers want on e-commerce apps: ❯❯

Find an app’s clear purpose Papadeas shares three guidelines to help keep your app on track: Pinpoint the business strategy behind the feature, determine the value it will bring to the user and understand the time and cost of the technology involved in making a feature happen.

❯❯

❯❯

❯❯ ❯❯

❯❯ ❯❯

Clutch’s survey shows that consumers are using e-commerce

Receive deals and offers (68%) Flexibility to buy at any time (64%) Compare products and prices (62%) Save time at the store (54%)

❯❯

Discounts on products similar to past purchases (85%) Purchasing directly through the app (84%) Discounts from push notifications (84%) Syncing loyalty rewards (81%) Product recommendations (70%) In-store personalization (59%) Augmented reality (54%) Social media integration (41%)

Check us out online

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Limited

your mailing experts

Harrison Mailing Limited offers services for all Canadian, United States, and International classes of mail, including file preparation, fulfillment and distribution.

BETTER DATA

FRom CANADA’S LEADER iN CoNTACT DATA SoLuTioNS Data Cleaning • Address Correction • Mover Update • Deceased Identification Data Enhancement • Phone Append • Demographics Prospect Databases • ResponseCanada • Consumers, Movers and Businesses Custom Solutions

905-420-1099

Call Stuart Sullivan for more information ssullivan@harrisonmailing.on.ca

Ask for a FREE EvALuATioN and pricing!

1-800-454-0223 sales@cleanlist.ca

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to advertise Contact Mark Henry, mark@dmn.ca

cleanlist.ca an interact direct company

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Resource Directory LIST SERVICES

LIST SERVICES

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Get more out of your

Marketing Database Explore the many direct marketing solutions we offer: • New Business Leads • Customized Prospecting Lists • Email Marketing Services • Customer Profiling • Data Processing & Data Hygiene

MAILING EQUIPMENT

Call 800-873-6183 or visit www.infogroup.ca Mail Processing Solutions »

Inserting systems, feeders and folders

»

JETVision® integrity/control systems

Learn more:

»

Duplo finishing solutions

»

Inkjet systems, tabbers and pressure

[Sales] Wayne Quesnelle 1.800.889.6245 x2021 Wayne.Quesnelle@bhemail.com

sealers

»

Parts, mailing and mailroom supplies

[Service] Charlotte Johnston 1.800.889.6245 x2012 Charlotte.Johnston@bhemail.com

bellhowell.ca © 2014 Bell and Howell Canada Ltd. All rights reserved.

Unaddressed Delivery

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Email Marketing Service TARGET, ENGAGE & BUILD YOUR CUSTOMER BASE From simple to complex, we’ll handle your email campaign from start to finish – delivering professional quality and results every time. Scott’s Email Marketing Service will help you: TARGET INFLUENTIAL AUDIENCES DESIGN ENGAGING EMAILS

MEASURE CAMPAIGN RESULTS CONVERT LEADS INTO CUSTOMERS

1-877-517-6864

lists@scottsdirectories.com ScottsDirectories.com

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Direct Marketing represents all areas of the DM industry: from small businesses to Canadian Business 1000 companies. No matter what our reader's size, resources or strategies, each and every organization we reach is driven by data, powered by orders and striving for loyal customers.

To advertise in Direct Marketing Resource Directory Contact: Mark Henry, mark@dmn.ca

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Excellent Execution

The great data debate: Individual versus geodemographic Why your customer data may not be enough

By Larry Filler

A

Larry Filler is a senior vice president, consulting, at Environics Analytics.

s an industry veteran committed to helping organizations leverage data to make better decisions, I am often reminded of the great Yogi Berra’s comment “It’s déjà vu all over again” when I hear marketers debate the benefits of individual versus geodemographic data.

This argument is perhaps even more relevant today in the era of Big Data, when the volume, velocity and types of data collected by organizations have increased exponentially. The question as to which data type is best may seem obvious. Why wouldn’t businesses prefer using their own customer point-of-sale transaction data rather than geodemographic data from an outside source that’s been aggregated or modeled to a geographic level? But before jumping to conclusions, marketers should first ask themselves the following questions: ❯❯ What problem are we trying to solve? ❯❯ What insights are we trying to acquire? ❯❯ What data have my organization already collected? ❯❯ What resources (money and people) are available to acquire and analyze data?

The answers to these questions will vary depending on industry sector. For instance, individual-level data are excellent when the challenge is targeting customers for upsell and cross-sell campaigns in industries with highfrequency transactions, like banking, telco and grocery retailers. But individual-level data are not as useful with high-value, low-frequency purchases in the automotive, home furnishings and appliances industries.

The new reality is that marketing organizations should use a combination of individual and geodemographic data to optimize customer insights, improve targeting and communications and realize the most value from their investment in collecting and managing data.

First, let’s be clear on what we mean when we talk about using geodemographic data. While there are many definitions, I prefer the following: Using the attributes of small areas as surrogates for individual demographics, behaviours, attitudes, beliefs or preferences—usually for the purpose of linking disparate data together to provide an integrated view.

In a perfect world, individual-level data on your customers or prospects would almost always produce superior analytical or targeting solutions. After all, your transactional data would show what they bought, when they bought it and how much they spent. But as we know, the world is not perfect and the data that we collect about our customers are often incomplete, leaving marketers without the critical information they need.

❱ DMN.ca

For example, while individual-level data may provide very specific information about customer purchase behaviour, they don’t provide contextual information on customer motivations, aspirations and social influences. But conducting primary research to collect this psychographic data is generally cost prohibitive.

By contrast, geodemographic data can provide this kind of information much more cost effectively. In addition, geodemographic data can give marketers insights into other key areas, including the following.

Share of wallet Companies with rich transactional data can easily determine how much a customer spends with them over a specific period. But this information gives no insight into the percentage of that customer’s spend in a specific category, which would help determine the customer’s loyalty and untapped potential. For example, loyalty cards allow grocers to know exactly how much a customer spends with them per week, but they don’t know that customer’s total grocery spend (or wallet size) per week. And a non-for-profit may know how much a donor has contributed in the past year but have no clue about the donor’s total charitable contributions. Consumer data available from geodemographic segmentation systems like PRIZM can provide data at the six-digit postal code level as a proxy, allowing marketers to factor in this key information and determine share of wallet.

Customer acquisition Even the best customer data often have little to offer when it comes to prospects. But organizations can leverage individual-level data on existing customers with geodemographic data to create profiles of potential customers and locate “lookalikes” on the ground. For example, one hospital foundation, hoping to acquire more donors to buy new lifesaving equipment, typically targeted its direct mail appeals to households near the facility. But when a PRIZM analysis of its donor file identified prospects with similar demographics, lifestyles and values in postal codes many miles away, the foundation added those neighbourhoods to its campaign. The result: thousands of new donors and a 250% increase in donations.

By leveraging both individual and geodemographic data, organizations have the best opportunity to achieve success. And while Yogi asserted “it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” the right combination of data can help marketers score a home run.

SEptember 2017

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