In the fast-changing world of gaming & casinos, a dynamic, enterprise-wide Customer Relationship Management system helps drive effective marketing. In an effort to enhance the overall customer experience, customer tracking and loyalty systems in a diverse environment like a casino or gaming company, offering an appropriate level of service to each type of customer is vital.

Customer Relationship Management system in Gaming – The Current Scenario

The current gaming market is characterized by a small number of large companies dominating the market revenue. The casinos and gaming market is maturing. A majority of gaming players frequent two or more gaming venues. The costs to acquire and retain new gaming members are increasing. A few things to look into are;

  • Customer Intelligence: The gaming companies gather a lot of information regarding their members that actively use their loyalty card. However, this information is soiled across multiple disparate systems without an efficient mechanism for consolidation & centralization.
  • Demographics: Very often there is not a holistic picture of the players & members and each preference needs to be researched in isolation and then pieced together for insights.
  • Intelligence Overhype: The problem lies in the way that Machine Learning works in CRM. In most cases, ML identifies large relationships in large data sets. It identifies a large number of correlations without providing any real insights in terms of why things are happening. There is a need for consolidating customer data into a centralized storage point.
  • Segmentation: Very little segmentation is undertaken and players are grouped on the basis of tier, age, gender, membership status, interests, communication preferences, hospitality balance, and gaming spend patterns. Campaigns are organized around these basic groups.

Future of Customer Relationship Management system in Gaming Industry

The future of customer relationship management requires simplicity and sensibility. Without predictive analysis, searching for customer information is like looking for a needle in a haystack. AI and predictive analysis will make it possible to analyze customer sentiments and intent, score leads, recommend products, and upsell.

The customer demands are changing rapidly, and gaming companies need to keep up. CRM will yield more accurate and actionable behavior models that will deliver better content and offers based on real-time processing of historical data and in-the-moment behavioral data, providing a very personalized customer experience.

  • A Focus on Simplicity: Data insights could be gathered from human analysis to spot opportunities for improvement in sales teams. The back-to-basics approach of combining the convenient automations with a personable human touch can change the face of CRM for gaming companies.
  • Data Hunger: CRM providers are getting data-hungry. In a drive to encompass more parts of the customer journey, CRM developers will be signing more strategic partnerships to encompass the entire customer journey and to expand their data. If a platform is not scalable and cannot accommodate unstructured data as well as structured data, the need for a diverse, multi-vendor strategy will arise.
  • Enhanced CRM Capability

The Customer Relationship Management capability of gaming companies will significantly improve by:

  • Developing and maintaining a centralized data storage point for data of players or guests.
  • Using more efficient and effective processes for gathering customer intelligence.
  • Ability to move beyond market retention to market share growth.
  • Highly detailed segmentation analysis based upon common characteristics and not just tiers.
  • Increased understanding of how segments respond to marketing tactics.
  • Ability to convert visitors to high valued members.

With CRM, the outcome gaming companies are looking for is a unified view of the customer journey all the way from before you know the customer to the stages of acquisition, retention and upselling. In the coming years, growing competition among CRM providers will lead to a fundamental shift in the way gaming companies interact with CRM tools.

With a sound CRM implementation plan in place, clear pre-defined objectives, detailed segmentation and a solid understanding of the characteristics of members, gaming companies can increase the market share and the wallet-share of players.