Customer experience is the most important competitive differentiator for operators today, says Aleš Gornjec, general manager at Comtrade Gaming.
OPERATORS can offer customers a variety of products that includes not just gaming entertainment, but also dining, events tickets - and more.
All these promotions have to fit into an overall marketing budget and that can definitely be spent more optimally if it is driven by good analytics. Awarding most valuable players, via promotions and incentives that they will appreciate, is key to building a solid base of loyal customers that will stick with your brand.
The land-based retail casino industry has been struggling with this for many years but is now catching up with an online segment that always had available all necessary information about player activity. This information is still often distributed among various in-house or third-party systems but at least it exists.
The majority of retail customers still pay with cash and don’t identify themselves, making a personalised marketing approach almost impossible. With more attractive loyalty programme incentives and the increased adoption of mobile phones for all kind of commercial transactions, land-based customers are also willing to share their details and operators can now think about deploying central wallets and CRM solutions that provide a 360-view of all player activity. This enables them to approach players through various channels and monitor the success of their campaigns. What do we advise to operators when they are deciding what approach to take when choosing the gaming platform?
For startup online operators, whose operation does not yet span multiple content suppliers, often a cloud-based, third-party gaming platform and back-office system is the most practical solution.
Larger operators, however, will often build a tailored portfolio of best-of-breed games from various suppliers that spread across land-based and online/mobile channels. One of the key challenges in such an operation is the dispersion of information, as players have accounts and data in each of the supplier’s own proprietary back-office platforms.
This makes it difficult for the operators to see the complete picture and thus deliver an excellent experience for their customers. For such environments, operators are best advised to choose a platform independent of content and channel, designed specifically for easy integration of content from various providers – an example of this philosophy is our iCore, the Enterprise Gaming platform.
The basic premise of iCore is the empowerment of an operator to deliver excellent customer experience and enable real-time, informed business decisions – both operationally and strategically. It is able to create a cohesive environment and single customer view across multiple brands, channels and products. This is accomplished by deploying a single central e-wallet that contains key player information and connects all third-party platforms and internal systems like bonusing, loyalty, promotions and customer service.
Read the full article in the latest issue of iNTERGAMINGi.
