A customer information system that ana- lyses large volumes of customer data in near real time to segment customers and present them with offers based on their buying patterns is being used in South Africa to boost sales volumes.

The Capillary Technologies system captures information from shoppers and equates this and other existing information to various segments of a company’s market. This is reinforced over time by additional information about the shopper as he or she provides more information.

Sales director Michael Geisler says the company is conducting pilot projects for three South African retailers and reports interest from the services industry. The pilot projects capture new data to supplement existing corporate data and to link information to specific market segments and individual customers.

“The powerful capability of the system is that it can be used to offer specials and deals to customer segments, either ahead of time or at the till, to increase their buying and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty,” he says.

The Capillary Technologies system captures information at the point of sales and can be applied in several industries, including service industries. However, its main application to date has been in retail, especially niche retailers.

“The information is captured for the company’s customer relationship management environment where it is analysed to gain an understanding of customer behaviour, which is then used to create a fine-grained segmentation of the customer base,” says Geisler.

These segments, individually and collectively, can then be targeted with specific offers using the medium through which customers prefer to receive promotions.

“This engagement with customers is a good way of ensuring your brand remains in customers’ minds and enables you to improve customer loyalty in a targeted approach.”

Further, the system can also be used to gather information on the product mix of a store and on the potential for selling specific goods to customers by analysing the key ratios between a plethora of data points regarding stock levels and stock retention, customer buying patterns over a given timeframe, and which items are bought when by which customers.

“The system fully integrates with social networks Twitter and Facebook, but it is often easiest for a company to use a customer’s cellphone number to provide an identity for each customer. This also forms a channel for direct marketing to send coupons for special offers and entice the customer into returning to the store,” notes Geisler.

Meanwhile, the Capillary Technologies system also enables companies to do time-bound special offers linked to the times of the month or year during which customers buy specific goods.

“For example, restaurant chain Pizza Hut used our system to analyse its customers’ spending patterns to enable the chain to improve its preparation for peak periods, while providing special offers during the quieter periods. “Pizza Hut gained good traction by offering Friday specials to local businesses, which was launched as a result of analysing the company’s business data and customer information.”

Capillary Technologies carries out pilot projects prior to deploying systems. This enables the company to investigate available data and its applicability, capture new customer information to augment available customer information, as well as test and prove the efficacy of the system, he adds.

The company was boosted when card giant investment arm American Express Ventures invested in the company last month. American Express partnered with Capillary Technologies and will introduce Capillary’s Intelligent Customer Engagement solutions to medium-sized retail merchants in the US and other markets, concludes Geisler.