Tackling next-generation customer engagement and today’s economic challenges

Tackling next-generation customer engagement
and today’s economic challenges
Perspective paper
An overview of the Steria Customer Engagement Story

Real solutions to tough challenges

Executive summary
Today’s organisations are torn between conflicting imperatives: to deliver outstanding
levels of customer or citizen service while radically improving the cost-efficiency of
how they work.
It’s no secret that the new generation of consumers has become increasingly
sophisticated and demanding in its expectations. It wants to take control of how it
interacts with the services it consumes, expecting organisations to offer open and
speedy 24/7 access via a flexible range of touchpoints such as web, phone and email.
Balanced against this are some harsh economic realities for decision-makers to embrace.
To survive in aggressive markets, commercial sector organisations need to create
ever-more seamless, intuitive and personal services that drive up profitability while
also driving out cost.
Meanwhile public sector organisations are facing slashed budgets today, and the promise
of even tougher cuts over the coming years. The 2009 Operational Efficiency Programme –
built on the Gershon savings agenda – tasked government organisations with finding still
deeper ‘efficiency gains’. The question now is whether, given new budget reductions,
public sector organisations will be able to continue improving service delivery to meet
the political and social agendas for reform and citizen-centricity. The issue now appears
rather to be one of safeguarding and preventing cuts to frontline services.
Most public and private sector organisations have already done a great deal behind
the scenes to integrate processes and create a smart, seamless base for customer
communication. But as new technologies and economic challenges emerge, your
supporting systems need to keep changing, growing and adapting as well.

This paper explores some valuable new perspectives as part of that
process and answers a few critical questions:
 What are your peers in your sector and others doing well?
 Is it realistic for government to keep delivering fully joined up, next generation
front-line services, with a fast evaporating budget pot?
 How are private sector organisations engaging customers to reduce churn,
increase acquisition and drive up their value to the organisation?
 Can new social networking tools and mobile applications be introduced
to existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) infrastructures to
increase customer engagement and reduce costs?

Steria Customer Engagement story

Welcome back to some
familiar challenges
The reality is that streamlined processes underpin any An independent view: How do next generation
smart customer engagement strategy. The question of customer engagement tools fit into the broader
how to collect, collate, integrate and rapidly disseminate communications framework? Find out with the help of
data – transforming it into valuable, real-time, an acclaimed academic from the Henley Business School.
actionable knowledge – still dominates.
A public sector view: See how Welwyn Hatfield
And the really successful organisations are creating Borough Council has saved £500,000 and improved
new process efficiencies along the way, while making service levels by partnering with Steria – and learn
services even more attractive and accessible using what else your public sector peers are doing to reduce
new social CRM and mobile tools. costs and consolidate service delivery.
 The public sector is bracing itself to get through the A private sector view: From loyalty cards to
next few years while keeping frontline services intact. outsourcing behind the scenes CRM and administration
But while hunkering down, it also needs to keep and deploying service innovations that really help to
evolving to stay current. That includes not just differentiate your offering, see what you can learn
consolidating services using shared service and from Steria’s blue-chip clients.
outsourcing models, but exploring the new
technologies that are out there for both their An expert view: Learn how our consultants can help
communication and cost-saving potential. you create the customer-centric services you need –
while saving money.
 The commercial sector knows that customer
profitability is about keeping focused on both the A board-level view: Our own Chief Operating Officer
bottom-line and the bleeding edge. Are there new explores how Steria is helping some of the world’s
ways to excite and engage customers to make your biggest brands to shape and deliver on their customer
offering come alive? Are there smarter ways to engagement vision.
acquire and build loyalty that your competitors may A future view: Read one expert’s eight-point future
now be exploring? With long development periods vision for customer engagement.
often required to integrate new technologies into
back-end CRM and data management systems,
your thinking needs to be happening now, well
ahead of the curve.
Want the full story?
We hope that you’ll find the content of this
This Perspective Paper distils just some of the Perspective Paper valuable. If you’d like to know
challenges, options and the opinions surrounding more, you can read the full Steria Customer
next generation customer engagement into one, Engagement story at www.steria.co.uk/
easy to digest read. customerengagement

3


An independent view from Moira Clark, Professor of Strategic Marketing
at the Henley Business School and author of the acclaimed ‘Business Success
through Service Excellence’.

Social media and the three cornerstones
of great customer engagement
Customer engagement: why you should care on spending on areas such as customer engagement
At its simplest, without customers private companies and marketing. This is disastrous for business. It is
wouldn’t make any money and many public sector precisely in tough times that organisations need to
organisations wouldn’t have a role to play. As such, look for new ways to achieve customer intimacy.
we must address customer needs. In social networking you not only have a new and highly
What is typical, however, is that organisations are good relevant customer engagement tool, but you have an
at having one-way conversations with their customers, affordable tool. That’s why I am so excited about social
via advertising, direct mail, telephone calls and the like. media and the role it can play in customer engagement.
It has the potential to allow you to get to know your
Customer engagement demands dialogue – a two-way customers better than ever. And with greater access to
conversation. This is now more important than ever customer information, organisations should be able to
before as customers are becoming more powerful, up-sell and cross-sell far more effectively. Unfortunately
more demanding and more aware of their entitlements. many companies still have too much data sitting in too
People are deciding when and how they source the many silos that is not shared across the organisation
information they need. What’s more, they are putting and, as a result, they are not able to deliver effective
more faith in their peers via online channels such as customer engagement.
TripAdvisor or through social networking with friends
and colleagues than they are in a company’s advertising. Understanding customer needs
I’m always amazed at how few companies actually
Responding to change ask their customers if they’ve enjoyed the experience
I’ve researched the commercialisation of social media of shopping or interacting with them. Now, with social
and have seen a number of companies adapting their media, there’s no excuse for not using the web to gain
strategies to use social media in innovative and more meaningful insights into what customers need,
engaging ways. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, by analysing transactional data and entering into an
are beginning to use ‘crowdsourcing’ techniques where ongoing dialogue.
they put out a web-based call for help in clinical trials,
asking for potential trial candidates to make contact Of course customer engagement isn’t just about the
if they meet certain criteria. online experience. Woburn Safari Park offered a number
of customers the opportunity of cheap admission if they
Customer engagement in an economic downturn didn’t mind being followed around for the day by staff
monitoring such basic things as how long they took for
While these new social networking approaches present
lunch and the order in which they visited attractions.
a massive opportunity for building customer loyalty,
the temptation in difficult economic times is to cut down

“Unsurprisingly, those companies that have responded to this new, more demanding
and aware customer are the ones that are thriving. They’re engaging in dialogue
with their customers in new and innovative ways.”
Moira Clark, Professor of Strategic Marketing, Henley Business School

4


The role of innovation Engaging in a conversation
A lot is talked about innovation in business and where In creating the right culture where your people have
customer engagement is concerned I believe it has a the freedom to manage customer relationships within
huge role to play. Research into how a brain works a framework of customer service processes and
shows that people who are rational, logical strategists, procedures, you have the essential cornerstone of
often sitting on company boards, tend to be more left good customer engagement.
brain dominated, whilst those who are creative and
innovative tend to be more right brain dominated. Sadly, This understanding is part of a triangular approach
creativity is often stifled to the detriment of innovation. to customer engagement. On one side of the triangle
We need to ensure this creativity is brought to bear in we have technology as a fantastic enabler, allowing
our thinking around customer engagement. us to achieve a single view of each customer and to
replace old-fashioned customer segmentation along
BMW for example, employs a small team globally to demographic lines with customer engagement based
think about and respond creatively to the sound of a on experiences and lifecycle behaviours.
car door closing. Another team is employed on the
smell of the car. These aren’t left brain, logical activities; On the other side of the triangle is the marketing
they are right brain activities that BMW has invested in. strategy itself: one that defines what you do with your
This is tacit knowledge that you can’t simply automate customer data, how you turn it into valuable insight
and BMW is turning it into competitive advantage. and how you action that customer insight.

In the same way, the Build-a-Bear Factory has taken Finally, there is the cultural cornerstone, the base of
an innovative approach that has turned a commodity your triangle, that ensures your organisational climate
purchase into an experiential shopping occasion where and people are wholly focused on the task of customer
kids (young and adult) get to take the shell of a teddy engagement. And to my mind, within this climate, the
bear, stuff it, give it a heart, clothe it and then name it, use of social networking presents a massive opportunity
complete with birth certificate. Creative thinking has to establish a differentiating dialogue with your customers,
turned this staple children’s toy into a true customer not just today, but throughout their lifecycle with you.
engagement activity.
We must maintain this creative element in our working
lives and encourage innovation and creativity from an These are extracts from Professor Clark’s
early age. article which you can read in full at
www.steria.co.uk/customerengagement

5


A public sector view from Bob Jewell, Director of Finance and Operations
at Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council.

Improving service levels while saving
£500,000 p.a. at Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council
In late 2008, Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council signed a They also partnered with a specialist provider in the
12-year deal with Steria for the provision of a range of revenues and benefits area to help us achieve all our
services. We already had a successful business model at objectives through a single managed contract.
Welwyn Hatfield but we recognised that we needed to
find new ways of reducing costs and creating efficiency A year down the line, we’ve achieved some truly
savings while improving the services we deliver. incredible results:

At the time, we were facing a number of serious
 Council Tax and National Non-Domestic Rates
challenges. (NNDR) collections are ahead of target.

 Firstly, we needed to make better use of IT to meet
 In spite of increasing workloads, new benefits
our citizens’ growing expectations and escalating claims were processed in just 18.3 days and change
demands – particularly with regard to council tax of circumstances in 7.25 days – better than ever.
collection plus revenue and benefits administration.  Over 21,000 telephone calls were answered with
 Secondly, we had to address a number of an impressive call abandon rate of under 1.5%.
performance and budgetary issues, such as how to  98% of reception visitors were seen within 5 minutes.
further improve our services to citizens while
delivering the savings and efficiencies demanded by  96% of ICT service calls were answered within the
central government. target timescale.

 Thirdly, we needed to reduce our ICT budget and In total, our partnership with Steria is delivering cost
make better use of ICT to meet the increasingly savings of £500,000 per year, and we’ve also achieved
sophisticated expectations of our citizens. noticeable improvements in all service areas – and there’s
more to come.
In order to tackle those challenges, we sought a partner
who could help us resolve these issues in three distinct For example, we’re currently collaborating with Steria
areas of service delivery: Council Tax Collection plus to deliver solutions for home and mobile working,
Revenues and Benefits administration; ICT service as well as improving document output management,
provision; and Customer Services. and conducting further server rationalisation to reduce
costs and our carbon footprint. We’ve introduced new
Steria won the contract against some very stiff services in the contact centre too, and have been able
competition. That’s because the company was able to to proactively reach out into the community to seek
demonstrate a winning blend of innovative thinking and additional benefit claimants.
extensive experience in the delivery of ICT and customer
service solutions for government organisations across The entire process redesign has also moved more work
the UK. And because we felt confident we could build into our contact centre which has allowed us to free up
strong and trusting relationships with Steria’s people. professional staff for more strategic projects.

“Perhaps the best compliment to be paid is that the public does not perceive
a discernible difference in the service but the council has made a £500,000
per annum saving.”
Bob Jewell, Director Finance and Operations, Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council

6


Spotting the opportunities

The coalition government has made clear that tackling Intuitive works best. Could your website be smarter,
the UK’s record deficit is its most urgent priority, in order easier and more service-orientated? Can citizens search
to restore market confidence in our economy and support intuitively to find what they need?
the recovery. This will require significant cost savings to
be realised. Tool up your teams. Could equipping your field-
based teams with smart PDA-style tools payback fast
Steria, through its extensive public sector experience, by helping them report and resolve issues faster and
has identified a number of opportunities that you can more cost-effectively?
seize to help you meet the many demands upon you.
New social media and mobile applications.
Here are some of these opportunities: Can these be leveraged to deliver next-generation
frontline services while also adding value and
Think strategically. Save tactically. Could overhauling generating savings? For example how about running
your customer contact strategy – and feeding key learnings a cost-effective community consultation online that
into how you operate – help you both save money and everyone can take part in, at their convenience?
increase the speed and ease of issue resolution?
Look at it from the citizen’s point of view.
Are there instances in which the need to contact various
Take a look at what your public sector
agencies and complete multiple forms hinders great service
peers are achieving at
and duplicates workloads? Are there frontline services
conducted face to face that could happen more cheaply
and conveniently online or via the phone? Eliminating
duplication and exploring new communication channels
can help you both make cost savings and increase the
accessibility and ease of service.

Steria is working with the NHS, 50% of the UK’s police forces and countless
central and local government organisations to improve frontline service
delivery and cut back-office costs.

7


A private sector view from the team running one of the UK’s largest loyalty
card schemes for the UK’s leading pharmacy-led health and beauty retailer.

Driving loyalty
on the high street
Loyalty cards are a proven way to successfully attract The team:
new customers, foster repeat business and grow the  Processes in excess of 2.5 million hand-written
value of each customer. They enable a company application forms each year.
to compile a vast database of information about
cardholders’ purchasing trends, aiding advertising  Can rapidly scale up – and back down – in line
campaigns and targeting. with promotional activity.

Success is about how well you capture and leverage  Shaved a whole day off the data capture process
knowledge to drive attractive customer offers – but it’s thanks to a new ‘scan and transmit’ innovation
also about ensuring that the back-office processing and created to avoid sending paper applications by air.
management of the scheme are cost-effective: driving
rather than draining the business.
To meet these interconnected goals, the team at Delivering against demand for one of
Steria was appointed 5 years ago to run one of the UK’s the UK’s largest retailers
largest such loyalty card programme – now with over This major retailer had a wide and varied legacy
15 million active cardholders. IT estate, with a range of different promotional
codes that had an upper limit on the number
This started with re-platforming the database which
of promotions that could be set up at one time.
was achieved without hitch thanks to our deep Oracle
This restricted the ability of the business to plan
expertise and experience; and then building the customer
and roll out promotions and discounts on a
care platform based on smart chip technology before
UK-wide basis.
starting to run the scheme as a fully managed service.
We have also developed a new call centre application for Steria helped to remove the constraints across
the UK team, making it more intuitive and user-friendly. 26 systems to create a streamlined operation
that can deliver rapid and responsive end-of-aisle
All of these administration services are provided by
promotions. The IT Director likened the project
a lean team, with the underlying operating system
to successfully putting a new tube system under
integrating with other key areas of the client’s business.
London without impacting any of the existing
The card itself is used in the majority of the company’s
buried infrastructure.
sales making it a critical contributor to the business.
A new club-based functionality has since been added The new solution enabled this major retailer
to expand and extend the scope of the programme. to tie marketing campaigns seamlessly and
automatically into distribution systems to ensure
that the right product is in the right place at the
right time, thereby supporting and driving
lucrative promotions in-store.

“It’s amazing how fast the applications are processed. It blows you away.”
Loyalty Card Operations Manager

8


Embracing innovation
ahead of your competitors
What could you be doing to win market share and create more profitable
customer growth strategies? Here are just some suggestions.

Move to the cloud. If you’re looking to expand your Empower sales teams with best-practice
business at speed, is a software-as-a-service approach learning. The smartest organisations are using new
to CRM the answer? This is a low risk way to grow, Web 2.0 based sales tools that work the way sales
helping you roll out tools to your sales and marketing people do. These help sales teams to identify qualified
teams faster and more cost-effectively – and roll them leads, develop sales campaigns and collaborate with top
back if needs be – while giving you rich, niche CRM sales people to share their successes – disseminating
functionality designed especially for your vertical. best practice across the sales force. Is this an approach
that could benefit you?
Connect up marketing, sales and the
supply chain. Are your marketing and distribution Enterprise 2.0. Can you turn service from a cost into
systems seamlessly connected, enabling the rapid a profit centre by establishing intuitive new kinds of
and automated deployment of goods and services to service and dialogue and leveraging the expertise within
support promotions and offers? your organisation in new ways. For example, creating
hosted, secure chat-rooms that also encourage third-
Segment social networking. Are you getting the party participation is a cost-effective way to help
best value out of your social networking investments by customers get more out of your products and services.
properly aligning these new technologies with customer It also creates more satisfied customers, higher customer
knowledge and behaviour patterns? referral rates and ‘stickier’ relationships. Running free
Explore the Freemium. Depending on your business online workshops and self-help blogs and email support
model, you may want to consider providing a free, cut are other smart ways forward.
down version of your services – incorporating advertising
to offset the cost of provision – as well as a chargeable
premium service including the full range of capabilities.
Look before you leap!
This would enable you to engage with different types
of customers, across different price points. Ensuring that these new approaches are properly
embedded and linked into clean, lean supporting
Leverage the customer’s internet fingerprint. systems can make or break your success. Steria can
Have your analytical capabilities expanded to embrace help you create intelligently joined up structures
new channels and customer touch-points? Can you see, behind the scenes as a way to delivering powerful
understand, capture and leverage customer behaviour frontline customer engagement approaches that
and search patterns, getting inside what drives each keep adapting and improving.
buying decision and learning where customers exit?

Take a look at what your private sector peers
are achieving at

9


An expert view from the highly-experienced Customer Engagement
Consultants at Steria.

Enabling better customer engagement
and service while driving out cost
Most organisations have an existing approach to customer engagement
and customer service that has evolved over a number of years. The result
is often a costly legacy of outdated processes and multiple customer
databases – many of which live in silos and are poorly secured.

This prohibits organisations from engaging with their How often – in your own experience – do you find
customers in the way that they want, in turn risking that your customer records are incomplete or not
their valuable customer relationships. available to the right people, at the right stage of
the relationship cycle?
Emerging technologies such as social networking have
the potential to improve how organisations engage with Getting this simple piece of the puzzle wrong costs
their customers. However many decision-makers are money in all sorts of ways. At worst, it leads to
simply not in a position to adapt and take advantage of dissatisfied and even lost customers. At best, you
this kind of new technology because of their legacy IT incur extra ongoing costs as a result of an inefficient
issues. These system problems are also set to escalate and lengthy transaction process.
as more and more customer data becomes available.
At the heart of Steria’s customer engagement approach
is the ability to examine your approach holistically.
Equipping you to deliver your vision
We can help you understand the best way forward for you,
The customer engagement process can be broken down design the right business processes, integrate your current
into a series of stages: customer records – while making sure that they’re secure
1. Listening to customers and understanding their – and then build in smart customer contact tools, adding
requirements an intelligence capability to enable you to really develop
your business profitably.
2. Communicating with customers
Our approach is one of collaboration and partnership,
3. Transacting business working with you to get the result that you want.
In addition to being experts in customer engagement,
4. Providing good customer service
our teams also have experience in delivering large
Each of these stages requires one thing in common to projects in your sector. That means that you can
be successful: good records of each and every customer cross-pollinate key learnings and best practice to
interaction – from the very first contact to the delivery help you deliver even more successful outcomes.
of good service.

10


Harness new thinking
Innovation is at the centre of our corporate culture, and Steria is investing
in predictive and analytical technologies and partnerships
that are helping us to assist clients like you to better understand
your customers, both as they are now and as they will be.

To help you drive up customer value, we’ll also help you explore the benefits of shared services and
ensure that you best deploy your CRM solution to meet your evolving business needs. We will help you understand
the difference between CRM in the cloud and shared services. That means making the smart
choice between an on-premise software installation, a subscription-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution, or
a hybrid approach combining the best of both.
Beyond that, we’ll help you explore the benefits of new social networking and Web 2.0-based tools,
ensuring that your supporting systems are primed to help these new investments link in to key CRM
and Business Intelligence systems.

“How often – in your own experience – do you find that your customer records
are incomplete or not available to the right people, at the right stage of the
relationship cycle?”

11


The services view from the expert teams at Steria who are focused on
helping you deliver rapid results.

Building blocks for cost-effectively
delivering a great customer experience
Some of the world’s best-known private and public sector organisations
trust Steria to provide a wide range of IT and Business Process
Outsourcing services.

However, our real strength lies in our ability to get inside customer pain points and critical issues such as
customer engagement – bringing together our knowledge, skills and services to deliver industry-defining
solutions that also significantly reduce costs.
Take a look below at the range of services that we offer to support a transformed customer engagement approach.

Your need Our service The benefit
To understand your business Business Change You’ll build a more effective engagement strategy
requirements and design the Consulting that fits your business
best business processes

To integrate and clean Data Management You’ll ensure that customer records are on hand to
customer databases be accessed for customer facing tasks

To access all customer Knowledge You’ll achieve high levels of customer service
documents such as Management
correspondence

To ensure that all of your Security and Identity You’ll avoid any embarrassing mishaps and protect
customer data and records Management Services your brand
are secure

To gain an in-depth Business Intelligence You’ll develop new business and save cost on
understanding of customer unprofitable customers
behaviour patterns

To manage your relationship Customer Relationship You’ll improve customer profitability and satisfaction
with each customer Management by delivering appropriate and relevant services

To save money and gain Business Process You’ll be able to outsource some business processes such as
from expertise Outsourcing customer correspondence – depending on compliance issues
relating to your sector – to provide a higher and consistent
level of service while significantly reducing costs

12


A win-win approach
Your customers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. They expect
a service that is faster, smarter and more flexibly delivered. This poses
a challenge in the current economic climate in which organisations
in both the public and private sectors have less to invest.

Saving money, not spending it, is top of mind right now. However by taking a longer term
strategic view, and an intelligent approach to cost management, organisations are realising that achieving
a holistic view – from customer facing services to the supporting back-office systems – can transform
the customer experience at a lower cost.
That’s why many organisations are waking up to the reality that the kind of process efficiencies that
underpin great customer engagement can also deliver significantly reduced costs. It’s this win-win
approach that lies at the heart of Steria’s customer engagement offering.
It’s about empowering your front office teams to provide genuinely customer-centric services right
for today’s business, social and political climate, with the confidence that they have the expert
support that they need.

“Our real strength lies in our ability to get inside customer pain points and
critical issues such as customer engagement – bringing together our knowledge,
skills and services to deliver industry-defining solutions that also significantly
reduce costs.”

13


A board-level view from Gavin Chapman, Steria UK Chief Operating Officer.

Shaping and delivering
on your customer engagement vision
Customer engagement means different things to different clients.
For some, it’s about sales or customer support for others it’s about
social care or emergency services.

Whichever angle you’re coming from, Steria’s approach  We have also developed the fuzzy-matching search
to customer engagement embraces two key phases. engine that supports natural language searching
on Jobs and Skills, the UK’s national careers and
 Firstly, we help our clients streamline the legacy learning website. This allows people to intuitively
processes and technologies that underpin their search a database of over 100,000 jobs and over
traditional customer or citizen interaction channels 600,000 learning opportunities using their own
to save money and create fully joined up services. words. The site attracts up to 19 million page
 Secondly, we introduce new approaches and searches a day.
technology innovation to help them meet evolving  In France, our systems support the management
customer demands and expectations. of 10.5 million subscriptions for Canal+, the pay
The harsh economic realities that all organisations are television channel.
now facing means that service improvements must go  And we’re supporting the implementation of
hand in hand with cost reduction. Steria’s experienced, 35 million smart meters for ERDF, the electricity
collaborative, end-to-end approach ensures that happens, generator and distributor.
helping our clients deliver on their customer engagement
vision and meet their cost reduction targets.  Steria also manages the mobile number portability
systems that support 6 million mobile number
Back-office efficiencies delivering transfers per year for 17 operators.
front-office vision
 In Singapore, we’re deploying a number of
Much of the work we do is hidden away, however it innovative mobility services that improve the daily
makes a tremendous difference to the way our clients lives of 4.5 million Singaporeans and the productivity
operate and engage with their customers – touching the of the city’s businesses. These include a real-time bus
lives of millions of people around the world, every day. information system which incorporates dedicated
 For example, in the UK, Steria supports the IT panels that interact with mobile phones.
that enables Royal Mail to deliver post to 27 million Steria’s pragmatic and holistic approach to the realities
addresses every day. of legacy technology and processes enables us to deliver
 We also developed the systems that support exceptional results and return on investment for customers,
8.4 million credit card holders. alongside the benefits of next-generation innovation.

 We re-platformed the database and built the
customer care application for one of the UK’s
largest loyalty card schemes with over 15 million
active cardholders.

14


A future view from James Herbert, a leading CRM consultant with Steria.

The Public Sector:
surviving in tough times
1. Vertical service delivery This enables fast and accurate data capture with a
Delivering quality customer service at a significantly minimum of effort on behalf of the citizen, even allowing
lower cost will remain top of mind for the foreseeable the authority to identify the location of the problem.
future. Some forward-looking approaches have already And this kind of mobile interaction is set to grow
been trialled, such as the Single Non Emergency Number exponentially in volume. Steria is able to work with
(SNEN) launched in 2006 in five areas of the UK. This authorities to ensure that the technology and processes
let members of the public report non-emergency crimes, are in place so that they can distribute their applications
community safety and anti-social behaviour issues on and set up the channels to integrate the information
a single number, leaving emergency services free to received with existing workflows and processes.
concentrate on providing essential emergency support.
4. System re-use for cost effective service
This service proved very successful – until funding issues delivery
beset it – improving service quality while increasing
Today’s challenge is to bring together in one place all
operational efficiencies and enhancing transparency.
the information about individual citizens that resides
This trend will keep gathering momentum if robust
in siloed legacy systems to deliver a more personalised
pricing models are created with, for example, external
service – implementing workflow solutions that knit
providers such as Steria delivering both the contact
together old and new systems.
centre service and the underlying enabling technology.
Future decisions on new customer information
2. Horizontal service delivery management systems will take into consideration whether
Whether they live within the boundaries of one local the investment can be used to solve more than one issue.
authority or another, members of the public have similar For example, can a document management solution be
issues and queries: reporting abandoned cars, broken re-used to manage not only the inbound letters from
street lights or graffiti and finding out how and where citizens but also the HR records for employees?
to pay their Council Tax for example. This kind of citizen In the same way, future investments will be made in
contact doesn’t require a specific local presence. So sharing components or whole systems that solve problems today
service delivery among neighbouring authorities offers and can be re-used tomorrow for other tasks to reduce
significant cost saving and efficiency opportunities costs while delivering better customer service.
without a negative trade-off in service quality.
This kind of horizontal integration will also increasingly 5. Social networking – a tool to communicate
be applied to the employee and employer relationship – and engage with citizens
for example, with a council providing HR services in a The public sector is starting to use social media to
self-service model backed up by a centralised advisory communicate with citizens: earlier this year, a number
centre and then sharing these services across authority of councils used Twitter and Facebook to advise parents
boundaries to provide real economies of scale. The future of school closures, etc. A recent report by SOCITM
adoption of this shared services model is set to (Society of Information Technology Management) cites
accelerate dramatically. a few other examples and concludes “They may only
represent the vanguard of what must surely become
3. Mobile applications: new ways of delivering widespread practice, particularly as the public sector
services and information to citizens struggles to bridge the gap between service demands
The most forward-looking councils are now enabling and available resources.”*
citizens to report local problems via a local GPS-enabled *Social media: Why ICT management should lead their organisations to embrace it –
Christopher Head, Liz Azyan – January 2010. The full report is available from
government application on their mobile phone. SOCITM Insight under reference 9039A.

15


The Private Sector:
staying ahead of the curve
1. Accelerated changes in marketing 2. Social networking: entry and exit strategies
Marketing has changed fundamentally, driven by a new, It’s important for organisations assessing social
digitally active generation – and this change is about to networking as part of their customer engagement
accelerate. For example, today’s consumers opt to watch strategy to consider not just their entry strategy, but
what they want on TV, when they want, often skimming their exit strategy too. The next social networking
through advertising breaks. A household rarely sits down phenomenon with massive growth is probably just
together to watch one channel anymore. Content is now around the corner. Remember Geocities? Bought
delivered in many ways, with the adults perhaps watching for $3.57 billion in 1999. In 2006, it had 18.6 million
Sky+ or using the iPlayer to catch up on their PC, users. Last year, it closed.
while teenagers watch YouTube on their iPhones.
For this reason, you need to ensure that you can re-use
So how do you embed relevant marketing messages in the data you have gathered while on Twitter, Facebook
this highly-fragmented environment – let alone measure and the rest to shape your next move. Can you also
response rates? re-use the technology that has underpinned your social
networking strategy – the data capture, customer
 Critical factors will be segmentation and analytics, response mechanism and data management
with organisations needing to carefully consider technologies?
response mechanisms in order to analyse what
customers are buying, where and when and manage Organisations spending money on moving into channels
their response to these buying trends. such as Twitter and Facebook must also ask themselves
what value they’re getting out of it. After all, if it is true
 Apple’s iAds is set to change the way that we engage that 20% of users generate 90% of the traffic on Twitter,
with customers. Some industry observers believe that you need a low entry cost to make a valid business case
this mobile advertising platform for the iPad, iPhone for using it – which requires agile technology from a
and iPod touch will help to restore profitability in the partner such as Steria. The segmentation of social
media industries. Content – whether that’s an app, networking sites will also have to increase – Wikipedia
video or any other media – can be delivered as a lists more than 180 social networking sites around the
‘Freemium’ where customers choose to have restricted world. Social networking is set to get increasingly more
content for free with constant advertising messages commercial too.
built in – or they can pay for the premium version,
which is ad-free. Revenue will then be driven either
by advertising or by users paying for content.
 GPS in smartphones will increasingly support highly
personalised location-based advertising, with the
customer given the choice of receiving content or not.

16


3. Mobile and permission marketing 4. Salesforce automation tools
More and more organisations are equipping themselves Sales teams want a simple and fast way of identifying
to better understand the buying process and spending where they’re making their money and which customer
patterns of their customers online. There is one area, engagement strategies are the most effective. The way
however, that needs to improve in future: permission to achieve this will be through small micro applications
marketing. People are becoming savvy about their that perform specific tasks. Their deployment will be viral,
marketing spend, especially in the knowledge that the in the same way that we learn how to use new applications
Data Protection Act doesn’t cover the mobile experience on our BlackBerry or iPhone. These applications will be
so there is less regulated control of advertising than delivered to mobile devices and synchronised with
there is with other marketing channels. The Data corporate systems to provide up-to-the second
Protection Act will no doubt evolve in the future to intelligence on prospects.
meet these new challenges.
Marketers will need to find simple and quick routes to
effective mobile targeting with personalised messaging
to avoid customers simply ignoring or filtering out their
marketing messages. Permission marketing is the
answer, with consumers giving you permission to send
them relevant, personalised messages – supported
by smart data capture and information management
systems which allow you to achieve a high level of
personalised and relevant customer interaction.

“To benefit from exciting new customer engagement opportunities and
technologies that may be around the corner, organisations must first
streamline and link up their data and processes behind the scenes.”
James Herbert, CRM consultant at Steria

17

Keep your feet planted in reality
and your goals in sharp focus
Creating more cost effective and profitable citizen and customer
engagement strategies is critical to your success, whether you are facing
tough public sector budget cuts or growing private sector competition.
For pragmatic solutions to the pressing challenges you face, talk to
the team that can help. Steria is already supporting organisations like
yours to breathe new life into their customer engagement strategies:
developing stronger and more effective customer relationships,
leveraging next-generation innovation and transforming service
delivery while significantly reducing ongoing costs.
So why not get in touch today?
Simply call +44 (0)845 7711 733
Alternatively visit www.steria.co.uk/customerengagement
to get the full picture.

About Steria
Steria delivers IT enabled business services which
help organisations in the public and private sectors
operate more efficiently and profitably. By combining
in depth understanding of our clients’ businesses with
expertise in IT and business process outsourcing,
we take on our clients’ challenges and develop
innovative solutions to address them. Through our
highly collaborative consulting style, we work with
our clients to transform their business, enabling
them to focus on what they do best.
Our 18,300 people, working across 16 countries,
support the systems, services and processes that
make today’s world turn, touching the lives of
millions around the globe each day.
Founded in 1969, Steria has offices in Europe, India,
North Africa and SE Asia and a 2009 revenue of
€1.63 billion. 19.3% of Steria’s capital is owned by
its employees. Headquartered in Paris, Steria is
listed on the Euronext Paris market.

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contact
Steria Limited, Three Cherry Trees Lane, Hemel Hempstead,
Hertfordshire, HP2 7AH
Tel. +44 (0)845 601 8877
www.steria.co.uk
information@steria.co.uk

© Steria stbi004uk / June10

Tackling next-generation customer engagement and today’s economic challenges

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