Convergys Assignment

Convergys is in the business of helping its clients convert daily customer contacts into
enhanced relationships that contribute to profit and strategic advantage for those clients.
Improved customer experiences lead to increased satisfaction and loyalty, and up-sell and
cross- sell activities during customer contacts increase profit opportunities. As companies
worldwide outsource their non-core activities, Convergys and its competitors have responded
by offering increasingly sophisticated technology- enabled solutions for customer relationship
management.
Because the same, or similar, customer relationship management services and technologies
can be deployed in many different industries, Convergys has expanded its served market to
include eight different verticals, namely, Communications, Technology, Financial Services,
Retail, Direct Response Marketing, Healthcare, Government-Public administration, and
Insurance.
Using the customer data in the posted spreadsheet, answer the following questions (note
they are different from those given at the end of the posted case):
1. Characterize the business situation of Convergys. Is its approach to growth focused
on customer acquisition and expansion across different industry verticals effective?
[Hint: Look at the financial results in Case Exhibit 1. How have they changed over
time?]
2. Are the Economic Value (EV) and Relationship Value (RV) measures proposed by
Carlson appropriate for valuing customers? If not, identify and justify alternative
metrics based just on the information in the database, supplemented with any
additional judgmental data that you think are appropriate. Describe the scoring rule
that you prefer the most and explain why it is appropriate for Convergys. Compute
the scores for each customer in the database according to your scoring rule.
Note 1: When combining different items to develop a composite score, it is
important to ensure that the scales of measurement for different variables do not
influence the final score. Scale-neutral metrics can be developed by standardizing
the variables where necessary.
Note 2: You do not need to submit a spreadsheet with the customer scores, but you
must ensure that the description of the scoring rule is precise enough to be applied
to the data.
3. Lento and his team are exploring alternative ways to identify the best customers for
growing the business. Compare different alternative selection rules
Note: Ignore “A” customers from the analysis because those customers are managed
through a separate process involving senior executives of Convergys.
a. Focus on the top 25% of “B” customers and the top 10% of the “C” customers
according to Carlson’s computed scores.
Note: This will result in the selection of 14 “B” and 28 “C” customers for a
total of 42 customers.
b. Rank-order the entire database according to your scoring rule and select the
top 42 customers. In an Appendix, list the 42 customers with the highest
score according to your rule along with their respective scores.
c. Select 42 customers who have the highest scores and also have higher than
average scores on both EV and RV. In an Appendix, list these 42 customers.
 How different are these scoring rules, i.e., do they prioritize different customers?
Which one(s), if any, of the above selection rules would be most effective in
identifying the appropriate set of customers for growing the business? Why?
Note: Build a table that summarizes your observations about each scoring rule.
4. Based on your analyses in (3), identify the top 10 to 15 customers that you would
recommend for the primary marketing efforts. Explain your rationale for selecting
these customers.