Project Description
Next Best Action project in the Travel Sector
TUI is the largest and most successful travel company in the world. The digital team at TUI were seeking to augment the business value of customer insight by aligning each customer’s propensity model to a snapshot of available inventory/stock, within business prioritisation rules, at any given point in time. This actionable customer insight could be used to determine the ‘next best action’ both for the customer and for the business. By feeding this ‘next best action’ into the customer dialogue across all touch-points it would be possible to drive up sales.
The solution design had to include real-time data connectivity through to the ‘next best action’ algorithms. Accurate data mapping across all connected back end systems was pre-requisite for solution design to move forward. Adopting the right solution architecture and integration strategy was pivotal to the success of this project.
TUI retained my services to project manage an RFP and supplier selection for a multi-channel ‘customer decisioning’ solution that would deliver ‘next best action’. Scope of work included:
- Leading requirements capture, planning and consultation to surface and exploit actionable data across all customer touch points, aggregating analytics, CRM / campaign data, and inventory availability, to deliver ‘next best action’ across all customer channels (call-centre, website, retail, in resort, in transit)
- Running the RFP / vendor selection of software application provider and systems integrator.
Actionable Customer Insight in Media Telecoms Sector
Sky has invested heavily into customer insight technology and process and has committed to building and optimising it’s own customer decisioning back-end to support it’s highly effective marketing teams.
I was employed by the Advanced Analytics team. I managed a project which delivered ‘decisioning’ capability to call-centres through the agent desk-top environment.
I managed technical and business teams in the delivery of a customer decisioning app that integrated into the call-centre desk-top environment. This was web-based desk-top application that advised agents which product or service recommendation to put forward for each customer. Customer journeys were analysed and mapped out and a new user-experience designed.
I matrix managed teams through the mapping of customer journeys and data dependencies, analysis, design, build and test of the customer decisioning solution.
The customer’s propensity (to buy products and services) was calculated by a set of rules engines supported by complex data-models. Applied ML/AI to improve accuracy automatically. The data models were abstracted from constantly enriched data warehouses, data-lakes and big data sources. Business rules were overlaid onto the propensity model output to determine the customer recommendations.
I managed all stages of the project, from analysis through to the delivery and test of the first proof of concept which was a minimum viable product. Key business stakeholders were the Marketing and Customer Service management team. The deployment, trialing and initial roll-out into call centres was scheduled at a suitable time for the business and was successfully undertaken during my tenure.
Global Bank – strategy, planning and road-mapping.
A well known UK multinational bank retained me on a digital strategy assignment. My mission was to define a road-map for a new generation of online customer self-service capabilities via web and mobile. This was to support a planned transition, away from the dependency on retail branches in the high street. The online self service was to include automation and AI and would be supported through telephony. Positive outcomes for customer included (1) convenience and (2) more choice about how and when they chose to consume banking services, any time or place.
My deliverables on the strategy included business and technical reviews and impact assessments of harnessing big-data sources to surface actionable customer insight across all customer channels including website/mobile app (‘intelligent’ user-interactions, web-chat, conventional analytics), telephony, social media and retail.
The successful implementation of this strategy was highly publicised. All major banks have since embarked in similar digital transformations and change programmes.
