By Professor Merlin Stone
I have watched with some alarm the debate about offshore outsourcing and illegal data access by contact centre workers. Part of the wider problem of dishonesty in any customer facing staff, it’s not just an overseas issue. My own family has been hit twice recently.
By Professor Merlin Stone and Lynne Wardle
In the last few years, there has been a very different type of customer for marketing data – the public sector. Using full postcode-based profiling systems to analyse the behaviour of communities at a micro level has exposed many weaknesses in public policy implementation. Public sector organisations based on geographical catchment areas like police, education and health authorities have always found it difficult to translate government plans into meaningful targets for their areas and often fail to take account of postcodelevel variations in the phenomenons they are targeting – or “micro-communities”.
By Professor Merlin Stone
Customer-based optimisation is, in theory, the Nirvana of customer-focused marketing. This term, used by suppliers who market the idea, refers specifically to using a very full set of information about customers and prospects to determine not just campaign-level policies (whom to target for which products and when to do it) but total optimisation of marketing decisions. The information used for optimisation includes not only standard database marketing information like customer profiles, propensities, buying and service histories or values, but also category-specific information like credit risk for post-paid telecommunications or utility products, or loyalty scheme status.
By Professor Merlin Stone
I’M ALWAYS WARY about ideas that come from people like me – hybrid consultants and management academics.They are so often designed to generate client desire to spend a lot of money on projects which deliver nothing customer delight, service excellence – well, there’s no need for me to list them as I’m sure you remember them all.
However, every now and then, one pops up that appeals to even my cynical mind. In the past, these have included the idea of the maximum six or seven (I’ve encountered many versions) of separation between any two individuals which explains the power of viral marketing) and the notion of crossing the chasm (explaining the need for extraordinary energies and focus to create radical change in corporations). Read the rest of this entry »
By Professor Merlin Stone
The Internet’s effect on retailing has been enormous.Wherever a product can be easily compared, consumers increasingly start their research on the web. This used to just apply to more expensive products, but now includes low cost items too. However, Pricerunner, kelkoo and their fellows have not commoditised the markets they serve, but have reduced the importance of differences in availability; the Internet is everywhere. Price is significant, but brand and perceived quality are still just as important for most products and buyers. Read the rest of this entry »
By Professor Merlin Stone
Last month, I was one of the panel judging Research magazine’s market research awards. The short-listing had been done well and many of the submissions were quite exciting. There was plenty of evidence of strong contributions to advancing marketing and solving clients’ problems. At the end of the session, we reflected on our judgements. It suddenly struck me that not a single submission mentioned the idea of customer insight (in my sense of bringing together market research and the database), let alone providing a case study of the idea in practice. None of the submissions for the best agency award mentioned developments in this area, nor did the submissions for particular research campaigns. This was despite the fact that I know that many of the clients cited do good work in the customer insight field.
The Government has an ambitious agenda to transform the delivery of services for children, young people and families in England, led by the Department for Education & Skills (DfES). When the Government consulted children, young people and families, the five Outcomes that mattered most were: being healthy; staying safe; enjoying and achieving; making a positive contribution; and economic well-being. The ‘commitments’ to deliver these Outcomes were published in the Green Paper, “Every Child Matters”. WCL were honoured to be heavily involved throughout this programme and have helped authorities implement it. This case study tells you more about our experience. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ashley Semmens
All failed programmes have sponsors and project managers who did not expect them to fail. Chances are, they were not set up to succeed, or if they were set up properly maybe time has eroded some of the building blocks of success. It happens. WCL have developed a simple one-page checklist, which we use as a guide to help us understand where the pressure points are in a programme. Read the rest of this entry »
By Professor Merlin Stone
Here, we compare marketing strategy in the private sector with stakeholder management in the public sector. In public sector policy design and delivery there has in theory been a stronger emphasis on how to “make things happen” for stakeholders. These stakeholders may in some sense be the “final customer” for the policy – patients, schoolchildren, taxpayers – but increasingly the focus is on the many “intermediaries” (from the point of view of the organisation charged with “making something happen”). However, the policy process seems to have created a distortion in the stakeholder management process – best expressed by a senior civil servant who responded to the question, “Who are your most important stakeholders?”, with the answer, Read the rest of this entry »
By Graham Parris
As in so many organisations, this public sector business unit had experienced steadily growing workload demands without the ability to grow their resource. Demand was exceeding their ability to maintain delivery quality and speed. The first step in this rapid study was to quantify the workload and then to introduce a method to prioritise work, and help management understand it, preferably in a high impact visual form.
The benefits were significant: Read the rest of this entry »