Getting the best out of your customers.

Emeka Offor
August 2008

This paper will aim to cover the following sub-topics:

Customer Intelligence
Thinking outside the box
Thinking inside the box
Steps to achieving and sustaining peak performance.

Business Intelligence
defined
- Business intelligence (BI) is a broad
category of applications and technologies
for gathering, storing, analyzing, and
providing access to data to help
enterprise users make better business
decisions. BI applications include the
activities of decision support systems,
query and reporting, online analytical
processing,
statistical
analysis,
forecasting, and data mining.

business intelligence defined cont

Business intelligence applications can be:
Mission-critical and integral to an enterprise's
operations or occasional to meet a special
requirement
Enterprise-wide or local to one division,
department, or project
Centrally initiated or driven by user demand

business intelligence defined cont

This term was used as early as September, 1996, when a

Gartner Group report said: By 2000, Information

Democracy will emerge in forward-thinking enterprises,
with Business Intelligence information and applications
available broadly to employees, consultants, customers,
suppliers, and the public. The key to thriving in a
competitive marketplace is staying ahead of the
competition. Making sound business decisions based on
accurate and current information takes more than intuition.
Data analysis, reporting, and query tools can help business
users wade through a sea of data to synthesize valuable
information from it - today these tools collectively fall into
a category called "Business Intelligence."

business intelligence defined cont

In novels and movies, characters who want to steal

corporate secrets kidnap key executives, hire moles

within the company or break into security vaults to
get what they want.
In real life, corporate intelligence agents spend most
of their time poring over industry reports, going to
conferences, and studying pages from trade
magazines
It is a necessary part of business for anyone that
wants to stay ahead of the competition.
Smart marketers closely track the activities/needs of
their customers, the competitors, the market, e.t.c.

business intelligence defined cont

Competitive Intelligence
Internal
External
What are your competitors doing that you are not

doing?
Or what have they stopped doing that you are still
doing?
Customer Intelligence
Needs most customers dont know what they want.
Even if they do, they may not articulate them well.
Activities
Expectations

Information can be obtained

existing and future needs,
decisions, their behavior,
conditions in the industry and

about customers
how they reach
the competition,
general trends.

Customer intelligence is the process of

gathering,
analysing
and
exploiting
the
information of a companys customer base.

It follows then that those who intend to break new

frontiers and surpass their previous superior performance
must not only have access to good information but must
also use that information to achieve expected results.
How and where do we get this information?
Every organization/every relationship officer has a huge
database of information. Start with what you have!
Account
opening
forms/documentation/elcees/data
mining
Cheques (History of lodgements & withdrawals)
Customer contacts (meetings, calls, correspondence,
budget,biz plan)
Who is your customer spending time with?
Ask open ended questions
Apply emotional intelligence (going through the twists
and turns in your heart/mind to the twists and turns in the

To achieve effective customer relationship

management, one needs to collect the right
information about his customers and organize
that information for proper analysis and action.
How can we benefit from customer intelligence?
Used to define and measure the customer
experience
To understand the experience of their
customers
To identify the reasons why customers call
To maximize loyalty and retention
To gain market & competitive intelligence

Other sources of information include :

The Press
The competition
Internet
Informal sources
E.t.c.
With customer intelligence, you can enhance your
sales process, predict which prospects
will be
converted to customers, and also which of your
existing accounts will go dormant.
This is simply because it will enable you understand
customer behaviour (why they do what they do).

When innovators talk of thinking outside the box, they

mean coming up with creative ways to solve problems,
new ways to look at things.
The box is the normal way of doing things or looking at
things.
Thinking outside the box implies that there is a problem/a
challenge and that we need a shortcut to steer out of it.
Think of situations where you have to think outside the
box.
Increase in lending interest rate/prices vs increase in
volume
Reduction in deposit rate versus increase in volume
Being firm/strict versus customer satisfaction
Placing embargo on lending
versus increased

Thinking outside the box encourages you to be

creative and innovative.
It is a proponent to rule breaking fresh creative
approaches to solving challenges.
How can you develop the skills to think outside
the box?
Challenge the assumptions
Assume the absurd
Think /Meditate and generate ideas for creative
problem solving.
Note: Outside the box is meaningless unless you

Thinking outside the box is meaningless unless

you have a thorough understanding inside the
box.
Thinking inside the box is an acerbic reminder
that there is nothing new under the sun.
It is about getting back to the basics, the
fundamentals.
The fundamental rules of business never
change, so dont try to change them.Kirk
Cheyfitz (2003).
Thinking inside the box promotes the fact that

Teasers
Can you still make huge profit without doing
unauthorised overdrafts.
Can you enthuse your customers through
quality service?
Can you achieve great mileage through
reducing your turnaround time?
Do you still need prospect list and marketing
plans to win accounts?
Are the customers of your customers still your
customers?
Recall the experience of Americans and
Russians when they went to space .

Proponents of thinking inside the box believe that to

break new frontiers, you dont have to do new things.
You need to do the same old things better.
You can still innovate inside the box.
When leaders do their best work, they dont copy
anyone. They draw on their own values and
capabilities.Robert Quinn (2005). Usually they tap
into their fundamental qualities and exceed their
personal best.

Some selected marketing basics:

Study the competition.

Champions frequently credit their success to their

ability to recognize and understand their opponents
strengths and weaknesses, and which tendencies are
major contributors to their opponents success.
A thorough knowledge of the competition is critical
to competing against them.
Do not ignore the competition. Do so at your own
risk.
Remember even ants can undermine
elephants.

a giant or

 Simple is good. Black is beautiful.

Taking a direct, simple approach to a situation is

sometimes the best answer, even when the course of

direction seems to lack imagination and creativity.>>

Sources of growth
Base retention
Share gain
Market positioning
Adjacent markets
New business opportunities

Some basic principles of peak performance:

Generating of Game Breaking ideas.
Ideas are key to a marketers competitive advantage.
Game Focus
A peak performer focuses on simple goals.
Sharing the dream
This refers to team work
The last detail
Paying attention to detail and going the extra mile.
The willingness to shed sweat, tears, and blood.
You may be bruised in the process.

Some basic principles of peak performance:

Making Magic
This means consistent success, even though it
looks unexplainable
Availability of Inspirational Players
They inspire and motivate others to peak.
Exceeding Personal Best
This refers to a deep commitment by each
individual to personal stretch. Exceeding
personal best is the daily performance measure
of athletes. It is their consuming obsession.

Dealing with side effects

When unexpected results occur alongside

desired ones, we call them side effects.

Sometimes side effects are good, often bad.
The worst are self- inflicted: results you could
have prevented had you had the imagination
(intelligence) to anticipate them.
Why is it so hard to forsee trouble? One reason
may be that we work on complex problems. Or
that we are tripped up by our own optimism.

..dealing with side effects

To sustain forward momentum we must

continually seek the positive. No wonder the

negative is hard to find.
In dealing with side effects, be aware.
The idea is to create processes that identify
errors and lapses and halt them before they
escalate.
And when they escalate anyway, you should
have a plan to deal with that too.

Last lines
Dont just get the information, get the message.
Use it.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

emeka offor