KYC (Know Your Customer) products and services in the retail industry have experienced a boom in recent years due to the need to know the customer better. This is palpable every time we do a search on the internet and subsequently receive a personalised recommendation, or on occasions when we close a shopping app, enter a social network and the products we were looking for appear. All this happens thanks to the flow of information that exists between different companies in order to offer more personalised products and services to their customers.
But what is KYC really. The term comes from Know Your Customer, and is the process a company follows to identify and verify the identity of its customers. This practice emerged in the financial sector to address issues such as identifying the level of customer risk, preventing money laundering, and avoiding fraud. However, in recent years it has spread to other sectors such as the retail industry. This is where, due to increasing competition, knowing the customer better has become a differential element.
The Retail Industry
The retail sector is the sector most closely linked to consumption, where both traders and marketers are involved. This means that, due to its composition, it offers a wide variety of products and services to consumers. Moreover, it is a sector that has undergone numerous changes throughout history, the current digitalisation being one of the most important. This change, together with globalisation, generates greater competition and forces companies to be at the technological forefront.
KYC solutions provide a clear competitive advantage over other brands, and follow different paths to achieve it. One of them would be the automated exploration of open sources (social networks, blogs, etc.), from which the user's likes and hobbies can be obtained. Other methods consist of taking advantage of the use of the mobile device, from which it is possible to extract frequent locations, or the use of applications. Finally, it is also possible to extend the buyer's information through marketing campaigns and loyalty systems.
KYC Vision from Future Space
Future Space has the experience to help companies to better understand their buyers. Either through our own tools developed together with our clients, or thanks to our advanced analytics services or custom developments. This has allowed us to grow and accompany our clients in the digitalisation processes that facilitate the understanding of their users.
"We use the minimum amount of data necessary to provide quality models, and we anonymise this information before it is ingested to respect users' privacy.
A relevant issue is the processing of personal data. Future Space has the experience to advise on compliance with current data processing regulations. Thanks to which it is possible to maximise the knowledge of the end user, minimising the amount of data required. Offering a quality service, and always respecting all the legal guarantees in terms of data protection. It is very important for us to be able to provide these solutions while being as unobtrusive as possible. We use the minimum amount of data necessary to provide quality models, and we anonymise this information before ingesting it in order to respect users' privacy.
KYC services in retail projects
From the Data Analytics team of Future Space, we have developed different solutions for our clients in the Retail industry. In them, through the use of Artificial Intelligence techniques, a greater knowledge of the consumer is provided, giving a competitive advantage over other brands. Some of these developments are:
- ROPO effect - Models used to identify the likelihood that a trade made through a certain channel is a consequence of a previous analysis made by the customer in another channel.
- Litetime Value - Calculating the lifecycle of customers to know how much they will contribute in the future, and identifying the optimal times to offer new services provides extremely important value to companies, as they have a much better understanding of the benefit they can extract from each of their buyers.
- Customer spending prediction - Knowing how much money a customer is willing to spend on their next purchase can also help a company when generating user-specific marketing campaigns where for example the behaviour of a user who makes one large supermarket purchase per month and another who makes several small purchases per week is very different, as is the communication with each of them.
- Churn Prediction - By using Machine Learning techniques we are able to predict the probability of customer churn in order to carry out retention campaigns if necessary.
Future Space KYC Tools
In addition to having the ability to develop ad-hoc models and solutions for our clients, Future Space has its own KYC tools that help our clients to better understand their buyers on a day-to-day basis. These tools have been created through joint support, and continue to evolve and adapt to new needs as they arise in the markets. Some of these solutions are:
FS Discovery
The mobile phone has become an extension of our body, it accompanies us everywhere we go. FS Discovery is a solution created by Future Space that allows us to better understand the users of our client's corporate application, allowing the creation and monitoring of marketing campaigns with direct notifications to the user based on rules, segments and usage.
FS Loyalty
Loyalty is a key process in the customer lifecycle. FS Loyalty is a tool developed by Future Space to support loyalty programmes. It is a fully customisable solution, easy to use, multichannel and suitable for both traditional environments and multi-brand ecosystems. The solution has success stories such as: loyalty, loyalty platform for customers and partners of a telephone operator.
FS OSINT
The use of Open Source Intelligence provides a wealth of information about our customers. Their tastes, hobbies, places where they hang out, etc. FS OSINT has a set of tools that help organisations to better understand their customers. By extracting information from social networks and processing it automatically, we extract value from the raw information of users. Thanks to this, we are able to perform open-source enrichment of the organisation's own internal information.
