Comet Global Consulting, a Merkle Company, announced that it has expanded its consulting relationship with Standard Life, a long-term savings and investment firm. Following a successful pilot of data-driven marketing decisioning last year, Standard Life is set to roll out decisioning across its business.

Standard Life’s ambition is to be the first choice of customers for their life savings, offering truly personal service for its customers, be they direct, through an adviser, or as part of an employer scheme.  The 2015 pilot programme was just the beginning of fulfilling that promise. The financial services brand has a long and proud heritage of striving to achieve the best possible outcomes for its customers, and the next step in making this happen will see Standard Life working closely with Comet, using new technology to deliver more personalized customer interactions.

Stephen Ingledew, managing director of marketing at Standard Life, commented: 

Iain Levein, Comet’s UK managing director, explains:

“Comet Global Consulting has an enviable reputation as the market leader in helping global corporations transform and optimise their omni-channel customer interactions, using data, analytics and technology to deliver competitive advantage. Through developing a close partnership with Standard Life we were able to successfully navigate both the technical and operational challenges of such a transformational undertaking.”  

The results of the first year of Comet’s engagement with Standard Life speak for themselves. In true partnership with a talented internal team, Comet built a firm foundation for omni-channel marketing to fully integrate the different ways customers might want to engage with Standard Life. Tangible deliverables so far comprise IT integration, data infrastructure, and extensive pilot and proof-of-concept activities across retail and corporate channels. This is allowing the organisation to transition into a comprehensive use of next-best action decisioning, business intelligence, predictive analytics and better use of data in the business, and makes customer engagements simpler, intuitive and more convenient across all touchpoints.

The attrition models developed by the Predictive Analytics team are also proving effective. Customer consultants in the Standard Life Contact Centre now have live, targeted messages built on the predictive models and analytical technology that have been integrated into the bespoke CRM solution agents use when talking with a customer.

Consequently, inbound offers presented through the CRM solution had an 8% uplift, and the business achieved a 300% response uplift on initial proof-of-concept activity. Additionally, specific customers at risk of leaving at retirement were identified, and the decisioning team (comprising both Standard Life and Comet employees) are now acting on these leads to retain customers.

2015 proved that the foundations laid can deliver real bottom line benefit. In 2016, Standard Life is set to scale its decisioning and analytics to serve the business more widely. The foundation will expand outward through a greater variety of business areas, using the technical resources embedded in the previous months of the partnership.