Liverpool Victoria Matches Tradition With Technology To Ensure Even "Friendlier" Customer Relations
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Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society has matched the longest running traditions with the latest technology by investing in pioneering new Customer Relationship Management software at its Bournemouth headquarters. In a move to become an "even friendlier" friendly society, one of the UK's largest mutuals has installed the latest business information package - called Decisionhouse - to enable it get closer to its two million customers and enhance its customer services.

With the takeover of Frizzell Financial Services in 1996, Liverpool Victoria (LV) recognised that long gone were the glory days of the 1800's when over ten million people belonged to mutual societies and contact was largely on a one-to-one basis. Since then, financial institutions have become more and more "anonymous" and so LV decided to go back-to-the-future by investing in Decisionhouse’s portfolio of customer behaviour management (CBM) tools.

Using its existing data warehouse, the new technology allows LV to discover key characteristics that for example, identify customers who will defect or customers with a higher propensity to buy a particular product. This information is then used to devise better targeted marketing campaigns for the range of LV products and services and ensure that the right customers are informed of the best products to meet their needs.

The new technology comes from Edinburgh-based software developer, Quadstone Limited. It specialises in designing scalable business information packages to handle many millions of customer records and translate these into meaningful marketing data and customer models for promotional campaigns, direct mail shots, etc.

Alan Gravett, database & market analysis manager at LV said: "By understanding our customers, we can meet their needs and by managing customer relationships effectively, our members consider LV to be a valued and trusted partner when making decisions about financial products." Decisionhouse allows LV to build on, and enhance, that partnership.

Using high-speed analysis tools and high quality graphics to swiftly create models of customer behaviour such as purchasing patterns and consumer profiles, Decisionhouse helps marketers build better customer relations and devise better targeted campaigns according to the needs of their customers.

Already LV has begun to see the benefits of using Decisionhouse with initial results showing a 35% increase in responses to a direct mailshot. In this case, Decisionhouse was used to carry out targeting and segmentation of the LV customer base.

Gravett added: "Before we implemented the Quadstone solution, we had to rely on our instincts but now we can select appropriate customers scientifically and set up in-house modelling to streamline our marketing efforts.

"We selected Decisionhouse as part of a review of over 100 tools. Because it can be used in the marketing department, we do not need to rely on technical and statistical analysis from other departments.

"We are already realising the advantages of better control over our data. Quadstone provided a high level of expertise in the analysis and manipulation of our data and this knowledge was quickly transferred to our marketing staff. Now, we can achieve successful modelling of all our customer records more easily than we ever could in the past."

LV implements numerous marketing campaigns each year involving hundreds of different communications. It can now use Decisionhouse's unique capabilities to target new sectors such as the younger/middle-aged markets.