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Flamingo Delivers First Platform That Enables 'Personal' Customer Experiences

Announcement posted by Flamingo 27 Mar 2014

Leading Australian software developer, Flamingo, has unveiled an innovative relationship management platform that revolutionises the way organisations interact with their customers.

Dubbed Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), the platform turns traditional customer relationship management (CRM) on its head. It allows customers to personalise the way they communicate, how they interact and want to be treated by the organisation and the mix of goods or services they receive.

Flamingo founder and Chief Executive, Dr Catriona Wallace, says the platform overcomes the challenge faced by many organisations when trying to offer more customised services to their customers.

"Customer expectations are evolving faster than organisations can deliver," she says. "Our research has found 75 per cent of customers want to be able to customise and personalise their relationships with organisations rather simply accepting what's on offer. Flamingo provides the ability to deliver to a segment of one."

According to Doc Searls, Harvard’s Berkman Centre for Internet & Society, author of The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge” and creator of the VRM concept, "We have passed the point in history when companies are the only ones defining customer relationships. That industrial age convention sought scale at all costs, and one of those costs was treating customers as templates rather than as unique human beings. The time has come for customers and companies to co-create relationships that work best for both. Flamingo is taking the lead in that effort."
 
"With VRM the customer comes to the market's table fully equipped to relate with CRM in ways that work for both sides. Customers can also manage multiple relationships with multiple companies in the same consistent ways, for the first time. This too will make life easier for companies' CRM systems. To make VRM work with CRM, however, we need to build bridges in the middle. This is what Flamingo is doing with its customer experience co-creation platform."

The customer relationship challenge

Many organisations face significant hurdles when trying to personalise customer relationships. Interactions often involve different staff members and communication channels while customer details end up stored in multiple locations.

There is also little opportunity to customise product and services offerings to match particular customer requirements, resulting in a "one size fits all" approach.
 
"As a result, many customers become frustrated with organisations and take their business elsewhere," says Wallace. "This can result in significant costs in retention and acquisition."
 
Improving customer retention

The Flamingo platform supports a new and innovative approach to customer relationships and retention. It provides ways for customers to co-create the experience they want.

As a first step, Flamingo assists an organisation to centralise existing customer information, allowing the generation of an accurate picture of past interactions and future likely requirements.

Customers can then be invited to review and personalise their relationship with the organisation through a web-based interface. This can include anything from selection of their preferred communication channel to the particular product and service mix that best suits their requirements.

"Flamingo allows an organisation to understand exactly what each individual customer is feeling about it," says Wallace. "It provides a practical way to treat every customer as an individual - something that has previously not been possible to achieve."

Streamlining customer acquisition

Flamingo can also help organisations attract new customers. By allowing easy customisation of offerings, an organisation can ensure it stands out in a competitive market. The platform also provides an efficient method for staff to interact with customers, improving satisfaction levels and reducing operational costs.

"Increasingly, customers are looking to deal with organisations that can meet their particular requirements," says Wallace. "Flamingo enables this to be achieved, efficiently and cost effectively."

Early success

Since the platform went live in February 2014 Flamingo has already secured strong interest from organisations ranging from fashion, insurance through to Federal Government.  Fashion business, Her Fashion Box, has achieved significant success in using Flamingo to re-engage and win-back customers who had previously churned.

"The benefits of personalised customer relationships are vast and high on the priority list of virtually every organisation," says Wallace. "Flamingo provides the platform on which such relationships can be developed and maintained."

Led by Wallace, the Flamingo team includes Chief Technology Officer, Dr Andrew Hunt;, Tech Entrepreneur, Luke Carruthers;, Strategic Advisor & Founder of One Big Switch, Paul Hunyor and Doc Searls who directs ProjectVRM at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.  Andy Lark, CEO and Founder of Group Lark, and former Chief Marketing and Online Officer at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is an investor.
 
About Flamingo Ventures Pty Ltd

Flamingo is an enterprise SaaS Customer Experience Co-creation & Analytics solution that enables customers to co-create, the experience they want, that organisations can deliver. The platform also has a sophisticated analytics dashboard for business. Flamingo sits within the VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) field which enables customers and organisations to be customer-led in design.

www.flamingo.io