Mindset transformation case study 1

Helen Westcott: In this module, we've been discussing the subject of mindset transformation, its value, the approach to take to achieve it in an organization and we've reviewed materials that enable clients to shift from a more traditional campaign-based marketing approach to a customer-centric communication strategy. What we'd really like to do now is bring the subject to life a bit with a real-life use case with our Principal Decisioning Architect, Ahmed Mobasher. Ahmed, would you be so kind as to introduce yourself?

Ahmed Mobasher: Yeah, of course. Thanks, Helen. My name is Ahmed Mobasher. I'm a Principal Decision Architect and I've been with Pega for a little over six years working primarily with banking and communications clients.

Helen Westcott: Awesome. Thanks, Ahmed. Now let's get started. So could you briefly tell us about the example client that you have, things like when the implementation started and which channels and use cases, etc., have been implemented, of course?

Ahmed Mobasher: So my example client is a banking type of client. We started back in 2018 with the web channel, with the inbound channel on web as the first channel for the MVP and gradually scaled up to the mobile channel, call center, inbound call center, also outbound call center plus email amongst other channels. And yeah, the choice for web was really a conscious choice because it was the easiest channel to go live with early on and show some value.

Helen Westcott: Great. See the value as soon as possible. And it looks like they've expanded out really well from there. So that's awesome. When you first started the project, do you think any stakeholders in the client team had already shifted in terms of their mindset from that traditional marketing approach to the one-to-one engagement approach? And for those who didn't, did you perceive any resistance to that shift and how did you respond to that if so?

Ahmed Mobasher: For the most part, the client and all the stakeholders were aligned early on thanks to the efforts of the account team, which was really critical to make this a success. From the very beginning, we had the Governor's board comprised of all the primary stakeholders from marketing, IT, and business to make sure we had the right resources, the right teams, and the right vision all aligned and working towards the same goal. That really helped make this success easy to achieve rather than having to battle and shift mindsets and deal with challenges of opposing views.

Helen Westcott: Of course, that's great. Did you have to realign with certain stakeholders during the implementation, for example, when a new stakeholder arrived or a new channel was added, etc.?

Ahmed Mobasher: Yeah, absolutely. There were a couple of instances where we had some challenges with some of the new stakeholders that were engaged from the very beginning. For example, when we first introduced the inbound call center channel, we had some challenges, especially from the agents because they didn't necessarily see the value that would add to their role or perhaps they had concerns about the content that was sent from CDH. In order to address that, we had to work around with the call center teams to change a little bit their KPIs to help emphasize and motivate them and encourage them to actually sell the products being recommended by CDH. And also have a very clear feedback loop where they can share their feedback openly with the business and marketing and make sure that it actually is actioned on and helps improve the quality of the actions and the content that we present in the call center channel. Another example was also when we first introduced adaptive models and dealing with the data scientists, they didn't really trust the models from the very beginning to be performant or accurate enough. So we had to work closely with them and gradually gain their trust by opening up the black box of adaptive models and giving them access to the details of how they operate, the data being used, the actual prediction scores, the accuracy, and give them the chance to control that in a controlled manner and influence the quality of those models. That helped gain their trust and also give them a clear view of the value that they can get out of it and encourage them to actually actively participate moving forward.

Helen Westcott: That's great. So just a really specific example now, when preparing for a new action launch, for example, which CDH capabilities do you tend to make use of to make marketing teams feel comfortable with who may receive it and how that action may impact the actions already there? Because, you know, with that more traditional approach, as we know, they're much more used to being able to predict the exact numbers of who they're going to reach with a particular campaign and when. So yeah, what kind of capabilities do you make use of or what ways do you explain how the new way of life is going to work to those people?

Ahmed Mobasher: Of course. So definitely with CDH they have less control over the actual volumes that they can generate, or at least forecasting of the exact volumes. However, with simulation capabilities and operations manager, they're able to streamline that process and get a very good estimate of what to expect in terms of impact when introducing new actions and how that affects not just the new actions, but also the overall distribution of all the actions across all channels, which gives them enough comfort and enough insight into what to expect so that there are no surprises. They're encouraged to run those simulations regularly with every deployment or every major change.

Helen Westcott: Great. So you really focused them on what they were going to gain from the situation rather than what they were losing in their minds.

Ahmed Mobasher: Yeah, exactly.

Helen Westcott: Lovely. They also had to change a bit their mindset about what KPIs they should be tracking. Rather than focusing on just volumes, they had to also look at engagement rates, CTR, acceptance rates, and that changed the way they approach the whole implementation.

Helen Westcott: Yeah, I mean, KPIs are a really good indication of mindset, actually, because you might speak to a certain vision in an organization, but what your KPIs are and how people are motivated actually tell a lot about where your priorities actually are. And helping them align those two things is a big part of this piece of work.

Ahmed Mobasher: Yeah, exactly.

Helen Westcott: That's great. So lastly, are there any other recommendations you want to give to transformation consultants about success factors on a one-to-one engagement project?

Ahmed Mobasher: I think the key takeaways from my experience are really having the right stakeholders to begin with. It's really critical to making this a success. And when not done right, often the stakeholders that were not engaged properly from the start tend to be the most difficult, the most challenging. So having the right engagement with the stakeholders and having the right alignment on the vision makes such projects much easier, much more fun. In addition, as we've heard throughout the conversation, having the right KPIs is really important to help drive the business and the stakeholders to make the right decisions and think with the right vision in mind, having the right priorities to make success. Last but not least, it's just having the patience and the listening ability to make sure we understand where the customer is coming from, where the challenges are and being able to make the right calls to even compromise on sometimes best practice or certain, you know, what we think is best over what we think is best for the customer at this moment in time, going on the journey together and making some compromises along the way to make it a long-term success.

Helen Westcott: Sure, that makes sense. Lovely also. Well, thank you, Ahmed, so much. That was really insightful. We appreciate you taking the time out.

Ahmed Mobasher: Yeah, and thank you everybody for listening today. Thanks for having me.