Customer journey management

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9674362-B2
Application number	US-201514868790-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 29, 2015
Priority date	Sep 29, 2015
Publication date	Jun 6, 2017
Grant date	Jun 6, 2017

Abstract

Systems and methods of managing customer journeys are implemented using one or more processors in a computing system. Each journey may comprise a succession of interactions at interaction points such as telephone conversations, responses to an interactive voice response “IVR” system and viewing a web page. Customer journey scores are determined for customers at one or more interaction points along the customer journey and the customer journey score is used to determine whether and when an intervention should take place. Models for determining customer journey scores may be created for a set of customers based on one or both of subjective and objective data relating to a subset of the set of customers that have made some or part of the journey, e.g. customers that have responded to polls. An intervention may take place during the journey or after completion of the journey.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system useful in the management of customer journeys in which a particular customer views a series of web pages presented to the particular customer via one or more website host servers, the system comprising:
computer data storage configured to contain objective customer data relating to a plurality of customers including the particular customer, and one or more predictive models for customer journey scoring, and
a computer server comprising one or more processors coupled to the computer data storage and configured to:
receive from a website host server a request for an intervention in a customer journey, the request being generated in response to the customer interacting with a particular web page, wherein the request identifies the customer;
retrieve objective customer data relating to the particular customer from the computer data storage;
retrieve a predictive model for a customer journey score from the computer data storage, wherein the customer journey score is an estimate of one or more metrics and the one or more metrics comprise any of customer effort, customer satisfaction, propensity to complain and likelihood of recommendation;

determine a customer journey score for the particular customer at the particular web page based on the predictive model and the objective customer data relating to the particular customer;
determine whether an intervention in the customer journey should take place based on the customer journey score;
if an intervention should take place, send to the website host server information enabling the website host server to perform the intervention.

2. The system of claim 1 in which the one or more processors are additionally configured to:
receive input data defining one or more predetermined customer journeys; and

wherein the determination whether the intervention should take place includes verifying that the customer is making a predetermined journey.

3. The system of claim 1 further comprising one or more processors configured to poll a proportion of customers making one or more predetermined customer journeys to obtain subjective data relating to those customers.

4. The system of claim 3 further comprising one or more processors configured as a model builder to build or update the one or more predictive models for determining the customer journey score based on said subjective data.

5. The system of claim 4 in which the model builder is configured to build or update multiple models for determining different customer journey scores each predicting a different metric relating to the customer.

6. The system of claim 4 in which the request additionally identifies the particular web page and the model builder is configured to build or update different models for different web pages, whereby the customer journey score depends on the web page at which the customer performed the interaction.

7. The system of claim 1 further comprising said one or more host servers.

8. A method of managing customer journeys, each journey comprising a succession of logged events in a computing system, each event corresponding to an interaction at an interaction point between a customer and another party, the method comprising using one or more processors in a computer server:
receiving a request for intervention in a customer journey triggered by an interaction at a predetermined interaction point, the request identifying the customer;
retrieving from computer data storage objective and subjective data relating to the customer;
retrieving a predictive model for a customer journey score from computer data storage, wherein the customer journey score is an estimate of one or more metrics and the one or more metrics comprise any of customer effort, customer satisfaction, propensity to complain and likelihood of recommendation;
using the model to determine a customer journey score for the customer at the interaction point; and
using the customer journey score to determine whether an intervention in the journey should take place.

9. The method of claim 8 further comprising, using said one or more processors, prompting an intervention if the customer journey score is greater than a predetermined threshold.

10. The method of claim 8 wherein the predictive model is based on subjective and objective data relating to customers who have previously made some or part of the journey.

11. The method of claim 10 further comprising, using said one or more processors, polling a proportion of customers at a point along the journey to obtain subjective data from those customers relating to the journey, and using the subjective data to build or update the predictive model.

12. The method of claim 8 wherein the customer journey score is defined so as to depend on the location of the customer along the customer journey.

13. The method of claim 8 wherein the predictive model is based on a set of variables relating to the customer, the variables including at least one variable indicative of previous activity by the customer during the journey.

14. The method of claim 8 wherein determining the customer journey score includes selecting a predictive model for the determination according to the location of the customer along the journey.

15. The method of claim 8 further comprising, using said one or more processors, determining multiple customer journey scores for the customer in response to said request, each customer journey score being a measure of a different metric.

16. The method of claim 15 comprising determining that an intervention should take place if any of the customer journey scores is greater than a predetermined threshold for that particular customer journey score.

17. The method of claim 8 comprising determining the customer journey score at successive interaction points along the customer journey in response to successive requests and prompting an intervention at an interaction point where the customer journey score exceeds a predetermined threshold.

18. The method of claim 8 wherein said determining comprises that an intervention should take place and further comprising, using said one or more processors, responding to said request with information enabling an intervention to take place.

19. The method of claim 8 wherein the determination as to whether an intervention in the customer journey should take place includes verifying that the customer is making a predetermined journey.

Assignees

• Nice-Systems Ltd
• Nice Ltd

Inventors

• Piaggio Natalia Beatriz
• Newnham Leonard Michael

Classifications

• G06Q30/0201

  Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data · CPC title

• H04M3/5191 Primary

  interacting with the Internet · CPC title

• H04M3/5141

  Details of processing calls and other types of contacts in an unified manner (unified messaging in packet-switching networks H04L51/56) · CPC title

• G06Q30/0203

  Market surveys; Market polls · CPC title