Legal Notices and Pega Customer Decision Hub

Essentials of Always-On Outbound

• Always-On Outbound focuses on learning the principles of always-on outbound customer engagement, its similarities and differences with traditional outbound marketing
• Learning how the brain works in outbound customer engagement
• Study a typical always-on outbound business scenario
• Objectives include describing the principals of always-on 1:1 customer engagement, compare and contrast traditional marketing concepts with always-on outbound and describe a typical always-on business use case in the outbound channel

Working of the Always-On Brain in Outbound

Customer Expectations

• Customers are more empowered and have high expectations that experiences must be meaningful, consistent, and personalized across every channel they interact with
• Pega Customer Decision Hub™ delivers the right message, to the right customer, at the right time, on the right channel
• Provides a better experience for customers and improves customer relationships over the long term

The Always-On Brain

• Pega Customer Decision Hub acts as a single, centralized decision authority
• The always-on brain carries out 1:1 customer engagement across channels
• "Always-on" means that the brain constantly monitors each customer's context across channels
• When it detects a need, the system selects and delivers the appropriate offer, retention message, or service recommendation in the customer's preferred channel
• The brain uses data about the customer, including past behaviour, profile information, and contextual data that stream from devices
• Leverages advanced Al techniques to predict customer context, propensities, and relevance
• Uses stored decision strategies to trigger messages and actions at the moment the customer will be most receptive to them
• Delivers consistent and personalized Next-Best-Actions across all channels

Customer Engagement Channels

• Customer interactions take place on various channels, classified as "owned" and "paid"
• Owned channels, such as a self-service web portal, contact center, or mobile application, provide the business more control over customer engagement activities
• Paid channels are owned by a third party, such as social media platforms like Google and Facebook, for which businesses have to pay
• Owned channels can be further classified as inbound and outbound channels

Inbound and Outbound Channels

• An inbound channel is used when a customer approaches the business, for example, a self-service web portal
• An outbound channel is used by the business to send a message to the customer, for example, email or SMS
• The mechanics of delivering Next-Best-Actions differ in inbound and outbound channels

Inbound Interactions

• When a customer interaction takes place on an inbound channel, the channel identifies the customer, then the brain evaluates the Next-Best-Action for that customer and sends the result back to the same channel in real-time
• The customer's response to the action is recorded by the system, and the cycle repeats

Outbound Interactions

• Always-on outbound sends outbound messages, via email or SMS, to customers only when it's appropriate
• There are two types of outbound interactions: always-on actions and one-time actions

Always-On Actions

• These actions are available for the Next-Best Action framework (Always-on brain) to select and deliver the appropriate communication to the customer
• Promotional actions (Default): The brain proactively sends out messages on a scheduled basis when relevant, evaluating the Next-Best-Action for each customer within a segment
• Customer responses are recorded and used to evaluate the next-best action
• The brain considers all engagement policy conditions, applies arbitration, outbound action/channel limits, and contact policies while determining the appropriate action
• Promotional actions are the default method of communication

Transactional Actions

• When a customer event significant to the business is detected, like a customer ending an online transaction, Customer Decision Hub receives data from the event stream
• The brain evaluates the next-best action and sends the resulting action, such as a notification email with a link to continue the transaction, to the customer
• The system triggers the outbound message only for the customer for whom the event occurred
• Transactional actions are regulated by engagement policies, arbitration factors, action limits, and contact policies, but outbound channel limits are disregarded if it is one of the qualified actions

Mandatory Actions

• In situations, it might be necessary to inform certain customers about changes (increase in interest rates or network outages)
• These communications(mandatory actions) must be sent promptly and are regulated by engagement policies and contact policies
• Arbitration, outbound channel limits, and outbound action limits do not apply to these actions, but contact policies are still applied to ensure actions are not delivered repeatedly

One-Time Actions

• Typical batch communication that all or a subset of customers receive at a specific date and time
• These actions are executed in a Business Operations Environment
• No engagement policies or constraints are applied to these actions, everyone receives the same action
• One-time communication: Planned maintenance activity, contacting customers outside regularly scheduled updates, to apply to urgent or time-sensitive matters and does not repeat automatically

Traditional Marketing Versus Always-On Outbound

Overview

• As organizations switch from traditional marketing approaches to 1:1 customer engagement, terminology comparison is needed

Marketing Campaigns and Programs

• Traditional Marketing: A marketing program is a set of activities designed to meet marketing objectives by grouping campaigns into logical business outcomes
• Always-on Approach: Marketing programs translate into hierarchies of Issues and Groups,using existing marketing objectives and desired outcomes to define the Issue/Group hierarchies that best meet needs
• Campaign briefs are used to create Actions
• A campaign translates into an action or a set of actions delivered to qualified customers
• In the always-on approach, an action goes into or out of play by changing its availability setting
• Any adjustment to an action in the always-on approach propagates across all Issues and Groups, optimizing across all programs and campaigns

Segmentation

• Traditional Approach: Utilizes segment, audience, or population used interchangeably to refer to the target audience, granular criteria is defined for identification
• Always-on Approach: Audience segmentation incorporates engagement policies with Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• By understanding traditional segments, they can be translated into eligibility, applicability, suitability and contact policy rules
• Criteria not based on clear business rules, such as demographic targeting based on market research or intuition, should be avoided
• In this approach, Al chooses the right action for each customer, all disqualified actions are filtered out
• The lifecycle period criterion is an eligibility condition business requirement
• The Average balance criterion is a suitability condition business expectation
• Age range/income-based data isn't part of engagement conditions, left to the Al
• Segments in this approach only identify starting population for an always-on outbound schedule
• The starting population contains the list of potential customers whom you want to send messages

Segmentation Reports

• Traditionally, segments were used to generate reports on customers who match specific criteria
• Simulation facility in Next-Best-Action Designer use the reports in the always-on approach
• Understand customer counts, validate the effect of changes to engagement policies and Al controls, and visualize the action mix

Volume Caps

• The number of communications must be limited on a per-customer basis and total messages generated by the system over time
• Volume constraints, contact limits and suppression rules in the always-on approach to set caps

Scheduling

• Traditional Marketing Approach: Campaigns can be run as one-offs, or as recurring daily, weekly or monthly
• The always-on schedule runs at a set frequency
• Actions are marked as in or out of play using the action ‘availability' option
• Emergency schedules can be set-up as secondary schedules
• Contact policies help prevent communication fatigue in customers

Journey Guidance

• Traditional campaign journeys are long and complex, designed as deterministic journeys in which one campaign triggers the next
• The always-on approach turns managing complex journeys into managing experiences
• Logic in the channels should be minimized to focus on the overall experience.
• The steps involved in outbound communication, i.e. action flow shapes, should be limited to 2 or 3 per channel.
• Next-Best-Action combines many actions to optimize experiences,and the Pega brain to decide the next step
• Action flows shouldn't contain decision logic and should not adapt to customer or business changes
• Business hierarchies (Issues/Groups) should be used to organize business outcomes and actions for a better overall experience

Business Use Case: Always-On Outbound Customer Engagement

Introduction

• U+ Bank recently implemented the cross-sell on the web microjourney and uses Pega Customer Decision Hub™ to recommend relevant banner ads
• Combines customer information, information about their past communications, current contextual information, business rules and predicted behavior via Al, to select the Next-Best-Action (best sales offer) for each customer
• Extends these Next-Best-Action recommendations to be delivered via email to increase the customer engagement on email, measured by the click-through rate

Implementation phases include

• Proof-of-concept
• Multiple offer emails
• Contact policies
• Volume constraints
• File and database templates

Proof-of-Concept Phase

• The goal is to send a credit card offer via email to those who have been qualified
• This requires that it have email treatment and to configuring a new email channel, and enabling the always-on outbound schedule
• The Standard card offer details will be dispatched to qualified customers via email with an apply button that links the bank

Subsequent Phases

• The bank plans to include more credit card offers to be promoted via email and to determine prioritization via Al
• Introduce contact policy rules to ensure that a customer does not receive the same offer message twice within a period of time
• It department has imposed a restriction on the number of emails that can be sent in a day, limit to the quantity of outbound emails
• Shares action details with third-party email distributor instead of a direct connection

This document covers legal protections, the role of Pega service consultants, caveats regarding documentation accuracy, and the implications of using Pega Customer Decision Hub. It also highlights how Pega leverages data and AI to improve customer engagement.