Leading Digital_ Turning Technology into Business Transformation ( PDFDrive )

40 LEADING DIGITAL
business, like free meals and hotel rooms and the like. But we couldn’t
figure out how first to architect the data in a constructive fashion and
then apply analytics against it that would allow us to get a guy named
X to make an incremental visit under certain conditions and someone
named Y to make a different visit under different circumstances.” 29
Today, the picture at Caesars is different. The company collects
vast amounts of transactional, demographic, and game-play data
through its loyalty program to create a detailed profile for each Caesars
guest. Employees then use this information throughout the company
to make better customer decisions.
For example, Caesars marketers can create and target special offers
with precision. Meanwhile, the hospitality staff can use the same information
to personalize nearly every aspect of a guest’s stay, from how
he or she is greeted on arrival, to how the room is made up. Should a
guest have an unlucky evening at the casino, managers on the floor can
even perform a cost-benefit analysis and offer complimentary services
to improve the experience.
While it is common across the industry to lavish this kind of personalized
attention on big spenders (or whales, in industry parlance),
most casino-goers receive a relatively undifferentiated experience. The
Caesars data-driven approach, on the other hand, allows the company
to scale its personalized touch to a far larger group of customers. Gary
Loveman said, “You can’t just fail to service the tens of millions of people
that constitute the middle of the market.” 30
Mobility and location-based data also play a key role in driving
customer intelligence at Caesars. A customer’s mobile experience
begins before he or she even walks through the door. Before arriving
at one of the forty Caesars properties, guests who have opted into the
company’s Texpress service can check in via SMS (short messaging
service, or texting). This service enables them to bypass registration
lines and pick up their keys at the bell desk. Texpress also combines
mobile location data and SMS to deliver timely and relevant special
offers. “If you’re at Paris, we could send you two free admissions to the