NICENEWS : Febuary 2006

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Taking business intelligence through the last mile of customer interactions

by Paul Bierbusse, SAS senior director of customer intelligence solutions

Too much information and too little time are two constants across all lines of business. With information in the marketplace doubling every 1100 days, and only 1440 minutes available in any given day, it's a great challenge to figure out how to control this information so that it can be funneled into a process where we can make sense of it and surface it to the right people when they need it. How this is managed impacts a business' fate. The ability to assess our environment, to understand our competitors and to act quickly determines whether or not we have a competitive advantage - and will be/remain successful.

For these reasons, the definition of business intelligence has changed. It's no longer about tapping into operational infrastructures to create reports, which simply addresses tactical issues. Today, business intelligence is about being strategic - having the ability to scale across ever-increasing volumes of data, found across departmental boundaries, and using the power of analytics to convert information into insight, or data into decisions. This is at the heart of true BI.

When a company can span the entire process of transforming organizational data assets into usable, proactive actions to obtain successful results, they are on the road to success. We can see this particularly in the area of customer intelligence, which involves knowing what your customers want, when and how they want it. When organizations can take the knowledge they've gained from analyzing customer reactions and feedback to proactively adapt to changing needs and trends, that is the crucial step, or "last mile," in separating the winners from the losers.

Organizations can get a fairly clear picture of their customers looking at their customer databases and identifying historical patterns. However, very few organizations have the "extra mile" analytics that allow them to predict what their customers are going to do in the future. For example, which customers are entertaining the idea of going to a competitor? Or which customers have the highest probability to purchase your specific products and/or services and when? The fact is that understanding your customers is much more than simply reporting on what they have done in the past; it's also grasping a view into each customer's future purchasing behavior and loyalty in order to maximize your customer's profitability. This is the new definition of BI at work.

Let's look at an example. You're a corporate credit holder with a major financial organization. You typically charge up to $5 per month on your card and have been a reliable, satisfied customer for more than two years. One day you're having dinner with a client and your card is declined. When you call the company to find out what's going on, the call center representative says that according to their records, your card is still active even though the card you're holding says it's expired and you never received a new one in the mail. They tell you to continue using your old card for now, but a new one is on its way to you. Within 30 days, you have not received a new card, your old card continues to be declined and you can't get anywhere with the customer service representatives. At this point, you are no longer a satisfied customer and close your account.

Now imagine what could have happened if the call center reps had the ability to monitor for key buzz words and even detect certain emotions (such as frustration, anger, irritation), and then analyze all of those interactions to determine the next best step to not only keeping you as a happy customer, but also giving you the opportunity to tell your friends and colleagues about what a rewarding experience you had dealing with this financial company. Now the company has gone beyond just customer retention to increasing customer profitability.

This example highlights how the strategic partnership between SAS and NICE will help companies better focus on customers and proactively address potential problems. Initially, SAS and NICE are targeting North American-based financial and telecommunications companies to help them act upon traditionally "untouched" data captured in NICE Perform. SAS analytics and SAS Interaction Management Advantage will then come into to play to gain additional insights into customers not captured previously to assist in better understanding customer behavior and what action could and should be taken to retain customers - thereby increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Recently, an industry analyst commented, "We are taking a positive stance on NICE's partnership with BI market leader SAS. By partnering with SAS, NICE can promote their integrated and combined contact center analytic products as a marriage of best-of-breed solutions capable of providing both operational feedback for contact centers, as well as strategic customer relationship insights."*

The joint solution is based on SAS® Enterprise BI Server and NICE Perform™, which captures and analyzes customer interactions (via telephony - audio, survey data or web) by using multi-dimensional analytics, such as word spotting, emotion detection and screen content analysis. SAS Enterprise BI Server delivers an integrated business intelligence platform for analyzing data from any enterprise source, such as CRM, ERP, billing and other systems. Together, the two companies will enable their joint existing and potential customers to make better business decisions based on a more holistic view of their customers.

The synergetic leadership of the two companies - with a combined joint installed base of more than ten thousand customers, including over 75% of the Fortune 100 - will set new standards for enterprise performance with this joint, end-to-end solution that bridges the last mile in customer intelligence.

*Current Analysis, "NICE partners with SAS for Advanced Contact Center Analytics" (Joe Outlaw, Oct. 19, 2005)

Paul Bierbusse is the Senior Director of Customer Intelligence Solutions at SAS Americas. Mr. Bierbusse joined SAS in 2002 after leading Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's High Growth/Middle Market Customer Intelligence team. During his twelve years at CGE&Y, Paul was a recognized thought leader in the area of Customer Intelligence, Strategic Performance Management, and Activity-Based Costing. In his role leading SAS' Customer Intelligence Solutions, Paul and his team are responsible for defining, creating and delivering solution architectures that provide SAS customers with a comprehensive understanding of their customer's behavior.