Online Self-Service Is Finally Getting Interesting

For years, companies have relied on customer support websites, online banking centers and other self-service channels to defray the rising costs of call centers. While this was an effective strategy, many companies are now realizing that there is a much greater opportunity—a growth opportunity. For interactive marketers, driving revenue growth by creating a more compelling online customer experience is the new gold standard.

The difference lies in an approach called "closed-loop optimization": leveraging real-time customer data, segmentation and targeting strategies, behavioral analysis and foundational content management to deliver the right message at the right moment to the right customer. The result: a more relevant and meaningful online experience, greater customer loyalty and increased sales.

The Customer Knows Best

In essence, Web self-service is a matter of making it simple for customers and partners to receive information and take action without having to drive to the store or pick up the phone—whether to research, purchase or return a product, voice concerns or manage an account. While some customers and some situations will always call for the high-touch experience of a live person, a quick, convenient and effective online experience can not only reduce costs, but yield better customer satisfaction, conversion and transaction metrics as well.

Companies initially focused on self-service for support because the business environment emphasized cost savings and operational efficiency. More recently, however, leading companies are focusing their energy on top-line growth and competitive differentiation in an increasingly complex and dynamic marketplace. Online channels now play a key strategic role in meeting the expectations of customers who have grown more sophisticated, and expect more on the Web. To win and retain business, you have to deliver truly outstanding online experiences, including high-quality and relevant content, intuitive design, useful applications and easy-to-understand navigation—and expand your perspective of the customer across the entire sales cycle, from product research to executing transactions to follow-on sales.

In this effort, you can leverage your rich customer data and put critical content to work. Every interaction is an opportunity to target an offer, introduce a new service and track behavior. From the moment a visitor enters the website, a vast amount of information can be gathered, from geographic location and browser type to clickstream data describing every click the customer makes on the site. Based on this and other information you may have about the customer, you can target the right content (such as offers, promotions or messages) to the right customer at the right time and in the right context. You can also track user behavior, identify patterns and problems with your sites or content and continually improve the experience through incremental optimization processes.

Leveraging Web Analytics for Maximum Impact

The effectiveness of closed-loop optimization is driven in part by the ongoing evolution of Web analytics technologies, as well as a better understanding of how these technologies can be integrated with content management and delivery applications.

In the past, investments in Web analytics have delivered a fraction of their potential value:

• Systems tracked only the most basic metrics, and lacked the depth needed for a significant business impact;
• The technologies were implemented as standalone applications without full integration into content management systems, hindering effective action and adding to the IT bottleneck; and
• Marketers weren't empowered to take matters into their own hands by using analysis to make real-time changes to site content and offers.

Times have changed. Today, some analytics technologies offer powerful capabilities for overcoming these historical limitations and deliver a significant business impact. First of all, they can capture more data and provide better analysis out-of-the-box. More fundamentally, when integrated properly with content management systems, you can continually optimize, refine and improve the online experience—all without IT intervention. In this way, you can improve customer satisfaction and dramatically increase conversion rates.

Closed-loop optimization processes consist of a cycle of interrelated steps for continually refining offers, registration forms or site designs based on real-time customer behavior tracking:

1. Create sites and content for specific campaigns, promotions or offers. This can involve creating different versions of sites or messages for different groups of users in order to test for the most impactful or efficient content (often referred to as "a/b" or "multivariate" testing);

2. Define segments for groupings of customers based on a combination of customer value, demographics, psychographics and other user data and campaign objectives;