Some
think all you have to do is invest heavily into the planning and preparation
stages and the job will run itself. To the contrary, diving into either type of
project without identifying resources, risks, and fully vetting through “what
if” scenarios is an invitation for delivering questionable work behind schedule
and over budget.
Define
goals and set expectations early, make the overall vision of the project
well-known and crystal clear, before you break ground. Measure twice, cut once.
The
same analogy could be used for building a preference center. The heavy lifting
is done up front. You need to know the desired outcome, but also put the work
in at the outset to be sure you achieve it.
Start with what you know:
First we need to look at your existing preference center, if one
exists, and determine what’s working and what’s not. Even if you’re building
from the ground up, there’s still a good amount of prep work to be done. We
will look at your current systems and technology, for example existing database
or CRM programs, to see how those can be integrated into the preference center.
One frequent challenge is when different business units, or even
departments, don’t work in synch. Sometimes they are using different systems;
other times there is duplication of efforts. This issue is pretty common with
companies that have grown via mergers or acquisitions and various systems
weren’t integrated.
Be willing to change:
Clients typically come to the table knowing what they want in a
preference center. Realistically, they think they know what they want
until we start asking questions to get to the root of what they really
want. It is common that a company starts small with the preference center, say
with one business unit, to test different options and work out any glitches
before it is rolled out to the larger enterprise.
Making sure your preference center is flexible enough to adapt to
changing consumer patterns, such as the current trend toward mobile devices as
a primary communication tool, is imperative.
Scalability:
It’s important that a preference center and the overall preference
management solution be scalable to adapt to an ebb and flow of activity. Our
typical customer is a Fortune 500 company that may have thousands of
‘interactions’ per day. On a daily basis new customers are added, existing
customers change their profiles, and some may opt out. The preference center and
underlying technology needs to be scalable for a new marketing campaign launch
or when a situation arises that results in a notable spike in customer
interaction.
Best Practices:
Preference centers as they exist today are still a fairly new
concept. Collecting customer data isn’t new, but the tools available for
managing preferences has grown by leaps and bounds in just the last few years. Preference
management has gone from a relatively simple process - collect customer data
and provide an option to opt out of communications - to a highly technical system
that can boost a company’s bottom line if done correctly. For example, beyond
simply collecting an email address and communications preference, a good
preference center can use data customers provide to target marketing messages
or develop user types.
What was once trial and error is rapidly resulting in best
practices. As we continue to learn what works, and as technology becomes more
advanced, we can use this learning to build even more efficient and effective
preference centers.
