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Sigma Dynamics Helps Turn Call Centers into Profit Centers
As customer churn continues to rise and outbound marketing efforts face increasing hurdles, inbound channels are no longer merely a cost of doing business—they're critical to profitability.
Recognizing this new reality, Oracle has launched Oracle Real-Time Decisions (RTD), a platform that combines industry-leading CRM applications with Sigma Dynamics' innovative predictive analytics to intelligently increase retention, drive cross- and upselling, and maximize the value of contact center call spend.
"Historically, organizations have viewed contact centers as cost centers," said Stefan Schmitz, senior manager of product management at Oracle. "[Oracle] RTD transforms them into profit centers."
Tapping the Potential of Inbound Channels
Until recently, the top priority of most organizations was to minimize call center costs by offering only "good enough" service. Agent performance was measured by volume—average handle time, talk time, and number of calls per shift. In other words, a successful call was a short call.
But as marketing clutter, opt-outs, and privacy restrictions continue to grow, innovative organizations are recognizing the untapped value of inbound communications. After all, inbound callers—and users of self-service Web sites—are already engaged and ready to listen.
Having identified this strategic opportunity, the question is how best to capitalize on it. Pushing a single, predefined message during every inbound interaction may produce results but doesn't make the best use of an increasingly precious opportunity.
Another option are the more-sophisticated, rules-based systems. Driven by customer segmentation information, user-defined recommendation rules match customer profiles with appropriate offers.
Although they are an improvement, pure rules-based systems have their own inherent shortcomings. For example, user-defined rules are largely defined by intuition rather than empirical data—for example, if a customer bought x, we think that customer is likely to buy y. These systems also typically don't take into account all the vital information gathered during the actual interaction, such as the reason for the call. Finally, pure rules-based systems quickly become unmanageable as the number of rules grows with each new offer.
Closing the Loop, Finally
What if new input during an interaction could instantly help determine optimal messaging? And what if you could gather and leverage incoming data in real time to immediately begin to shape a more-effective strategy for future contacts, even as customer behavior evolves over time?
By tightly integrating Sigma Dynamic's predictive analytics with Oracle's industry-leading CRM applications, Oracle RTD makes these goals a reality. In addition, Oracle RTD is based on an open service-oriented architecture, which means it can easily integrate with existing operational applications.
In contrast to data mining and pure rules-based solutions, Oracle RTD automatically closes the loop and learns from each customer interaction by autonomously updating its predictive models in real time. Furthermore, Oracle RTD continuously observes and learns from ever-changing customer behavior, and uses those insights to provide optimal recommendations—regardless of touch point.
Just as important, Oracle RTD allows organizations to manage competing and often conflicting business goals that may change over time. Business objectives for inbound customer interactions, such as maximizing revenue, improving customer loyalty, and minimizing selling costs, can be aligned and managed within a single RTD application. Oracle RTD measures and learns from the impact that each recommendation has on the various business objectives.
"The techniques of RTD, predictive analytics and rules engines, have been around for quite a while," Schmitz says. "Now Oracle is making them fully operational."
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