Safe Prediction
· The future belongs to the marketers who best:
§ Capture
§ Analyze and mine
§ Use
o Marketing data
What is the difference Between Data and Knowledge?
· Knowledge management—the systematic process of identifying, capturing, and transferring information and knowledge people can use to create, compete, and improce.
· Knowledge continuum
o it begins with data collected from traditional marketing research to transactional data
o raw data are subject to analytic routines in order to transform them into information that is useful for decision-making or operational purposes.
Types of Knowledge
· Explicit knowledge
o Knowledge of skilled workers that can be articulated, communicated to others, and, if necessary, incorporated into marketing decision support or automated marketing systems
· Tacit knowledge
o Knowledge that has not been articulated; often subconscious and relatively difficult to communicate to other people. Can be referred to as part of the set of skills
Role of Knowledge in Marketing
1. To enable human agents to do their work better, faster, and in a way that provides maximum customer satisfaction
2. To create automated systems that perform at least as well as the most skilled human agent
Hypothetical example:
· Applying for a mortgage
o Uses available technology
o Tightly intergrated systems
§ Business processes
§ Workflows
· The Responses
o Rule-based automated system immediately provides
§ Personalized web sitelet
§ E-mail acknowledgment
§ Assignment of Live service agent
· Justified by CLV
· Dialog continues
o Automated for routine events
o Live agent for questions and resolve issues
§ Agent supported with knowledge base
§ Collaborative systems
o All part of an integrated, automated workflow
· The mortgage approval
o Loan approval is an important event
o May be reserved for human contact, although it can be automated
o Smooth, responsive system promotes customer loyalty
Factors that create Loyalty in financial services
· Tailoring products to customer’s needs
· Providng a personal contact
· Anticipating customer’s needs—exceeding customers’ expectations is a hallmark of superior services marketing
· Making customers feel appreciated
Developing Customer Contact Protocols
1. Protocol
a. Detailed set of guidelines for using knowledge from several sources to provide the products, services, and support customers need.
2. Policies
a. Used in the strategy sense to deal with a specific issue or customer segment
3. Back-end
a. Used in direct marketing as the after-sale processes that fulfill orders and satisfy customers
4. Business processes
a. Set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome.
Options for adding data
1. capture additional data from behavior on the site
2. ask for additional data as relationship deepens
3. model segment profiles and infer data
4. purchase data from third-party suppliers
Embedding expertise in contact protocols increases their ability to satisfy customer needs and support marketing activities
Beyond databases to knowledge bases
· a knowledge base
o a database of information about specific subject
o can be in the form of questions and answers to them.
Querying knowledge bases
1. structured questions (specific questions)
a. answer chosen from a menu of responses
2. semi-structured questions
a. requires careful definition of terms and perhaps modeling to produce responses
3. unstructured questions
a. even more care in defining terms and elaborate attempts to develop responses.
Capturing Knowledge
1. Capturing Tacit Knowledge is demanding, but techniques exist
a. Involve extensive observation of the work group
b. Developing a code for each task or activity
c. Using those codes to map the work processes
2. Capturing explicit knowledge is still unknown territory even though marketers have made considerable progress