Walking the data journey to drastically empower customer centricity through data science

Challenge

Our mission was to help a leading actor in the tourism industry maintain its pioneering position in customer experience through data science. Our client was already mature in their customer analytics, but wanted to go to the next level with a true customer centric approach, globally and at scale.

We had to combine short term urgency – delivering significant results in a few months – and longer term vision, to make sure the AI plan and investments were detailed and approved by stakeholders in advance (Executive committee, marketing teams, IT, etc.).

We had to find the right balance with the existing data ecosystem, as well as define mandatory prerequisites for industrialization at scale.

During our discovery phase we identified the smart scoring of customer needs and behaviors as one of the most powerful and emblematic use cases for the client. Consequently, we prioritized leveraging existing data and analytics capabilities to deploy a strategic lead scoring solution for use across business lines.

Our approach

We initiated a ‘flash diagnosis’ to identify the most promising data use cases for the marketing department. This is a proprietary approach that combines the client’s business knowledge with our data science expertise.

We then unlocked ROI driven and emblematic use cases, prioritized them and sized efforts. This enabled us to build a 3 years strategic plan for artificial intelligence development.

After many discussions with the ExCom and marketing teams, it was agreed that a sophisticated and flexible lead scoring solution was the priority use case in achieving the client’s aims.

We developed and deployed this lead scoring solution, ensuring it was not simply an adhoc machine learning approach taken off the shelf, but a truly bespoke business lever aiming to maximize business impact.

To achieve this goal, it was necessary to leverage, evolve, and sometimes professionalize existing internal data and analytics capabilities (data lake, IT, data architecture, etc.).

The result was a fully developed, industrialized and flexible lead scoring solution, truly embedded in existing information systems (call centers, CRM, etc.). This data science solution perfectly matched the client’s business vision (smarter call centers, more relevancy at every touchpoint, etc.), and was easily usable across business lines. Furthermore, the solution was built to be resilient enough to fit further data use cases that could evolve over the next few years.

Outcome

Empower people through data

We leveraged a proprietary method to accelerate alignment and facilitate smooth collaboration between stakeholders. This specific approach enabled us to increase top management commitment, data literacy, and support the strategic data roadmap for several years.

Additionally, we delivered a program of data science training courses across the Group, that helped teams better leverage the possibilities offered by the new lead scoring solution. This helped democratize the benefits of the algorithm, as well as contribute to its widespread adoption.

Evolve data assets for the company

We helped professionalize the cloud data lake, specifically on architecture & governance rules that had to be restructured and optimized for more efficiency, tracking, security, etc.

We also anticipated the needs and constraints that could impact the deployment of additional use cases in the next few years. Anticipating business needs and pre-empting future challenges with flexible technological assets is a key success factor for a lasting AI plan.

We provided a Data Science Playbook for the teams. This aimed to share best practices collected since 2006, but also structure the approach for identifying next gen use cases, develop solutions and industrialize them at scale. This has been customized specifically for our hospitality client.

Going the extra mile to ensure success, we finally delivered a documented framework to the business lines, smoothing business interpretation of scoring outcomes, and helping teams monitor performance efficiently. Our dual expertise in consultancy and data science enables us to translate data insights into a business action plan, ensuring projects deliver tangible client value.

Produce a lead scoring overperforming former tool

Despite having attained a high level of maturity in customer analytics, the customer’s goal was to improve on the results of their previous investments in customer experience tools. Thanks to our comprehensive approach (demand behavior, propensity to buy, alignment with longer term goals, existing technological foundation etc) we succeeded in delivering a solution that was more efficient than the former one.