The gaming business moves fast. Casinos serve a multitude of entertainment options to thousands of patrons 24-hours a day, which results in a myriad of interaction points with their patrons. And competition in this service industry is fierce. If a patron at a casino doesn’t feel that they are being offered something that they want, it is all too easy for them to find another entertainment option for their hard-earned dollars. Patron expectations are high. Casino companies have a lot at stake with enticing patrons through reinvestment in the forms of free play, free meals and even free accommodation. Making high-quality, real-time decisions during each patron interaction is critical to the success of a casino.
However, managing interactions among patrons in real-time comes with its challenges. Patrons today do not act in typical ways, which makes it difficult for rules-only approaches to be successful. Some patrons are there for gaming, some for shows and entertainment, some for dining or nightlife, some for spa and maybe even some for golf. Without a comprehensive understanding of their needs and preferences, actions taken with patrons will fall flat.
When identifying what actions to take with a patron while they are in the experience, casinos need to manage the delicate balance between ensuring that the offer is attractive to the patron while at the same time maintaining profitability for the casino. Showering patrons with free food and drink, hotel rooms, show tickets or even cash in a bid to maintain their loyalty can easily backfire, whether it is a direct impact on the bottom line or if patrons start to feel that these treatments are meaningless to them. Predictive analytics can supply the much needed context to the patron experience. When coupled with real-time decision capabilities, a casino can truly enhance and personalize the interactions that they have with their patrons.
What Are Real-Time Decisions?
Real-time decisions are decisions that are made during a patron’s point of experience, using data captured from patron interactions as they occur, along with historical information and the outputs of analytics. Let’s explore an example.
John Smith, was a very high value, high frequency patron at the “Zodiac” casino, however he has not visited the casino in the last 6 months. John inserts his casinos rewards card into a slot machine on the Zodiac’s gaming floor. The Zodiac casino can then gather John’s preferences, his previous gaming history, his theoretical worth, his predicted lifetime value and who the casino host is for this player. Using the information, an alert can be sent to the host to go and greet John, welcome him back to the property and provide him with an invitation to an exclusive poker tournament.
This is an illustration of real-time decisions in action, or real-time marketing. Real-time marketing, or the ability to provide context to a patron interaction, allows you to provide relevant, insightful offers, recommendations, advice and even service operations actions when they are needed the most. In the case of John Smith, the offer of a seat at a poker tournament was extremely relevant to him, based on his previous behavior and preferences.
High-value casino customers like John Smith are very accustomed to receiving preferential treatment based on their casino activity. Casino patrons value the high-touch service they receive once they reach preferential reward status with their preferred casino company, but all an unhappy patron would have to do is present their current players card at a competitor and they will very likely be granted the same status with that competitor. Therefore, making high-quality, real-time decisions during each patron interaction while the patron is still in the casinos is critical to the success of a casino.
How Do I Use Real-Time Decisions?
To execute on real-time decisions, you need real-time data on patron interactions, historical data on your patrons, including preferences, historical information and predictive analytics scores, and a real-time decision engine.
Real-time data is the flow of data captured from patron interactions as they occur. With the various technologies via which a casino can track and interact with its patrons – such as websites, kiosks, slot machines, iBeacons and smart phones – it is now possible to collect data from consumers both explicitly (via forms and purchases) and implicitly (via Web sessions and geo-location). When these systems are connected to networks, the data can be shared in real time with other systems within the casino. As a result, casino organizations can have access to an increased level of detail about patrons as they interact. Any insights gained about the patron can be used in real time to create a response while the patron is still interacting. These offers can be more relevant because they can be targeted based on the current interest and status of the patron.
Real-time analytics and business rules are applied to both historical and real-time data that drive the real-time decision manager capabilities. Historical data in the casino industry is typically housed in an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) where data is typically one day behind and is loaded from the source system to the EDW through an Extract Transform Load (ETL) process. Real-time data is captured at the source system and can be used immediately with a real-time decision engine. These include capturing the slot machine card-ins and transactions, the food and beverage outlet point of sale (POS) systems, and any other source system that is used to build a 360-degree view of the patron.
Capturing real-time data increases the ability to gain instant insight into customer behavior, increase customer loyalty, and reward them for current play. Real-time offers may be more relevant to increasing redemption potential because they are targeted and personalized. As a result, response rates may increase for the inbound offers more than they do for traditional marketing campaigns. Once the patron is at the property they are effectively ready to enter into a real-time decision processing diagram and receive the targeted offers and customer service interactions that drive loyalty and increased profitability.
Making high-quality, real-time decisions during each patron interaction is critical to the success of a casino. Such decisions need to be relevant to patrons’ needs and values, and reflect the business strategy of the casino while at the same time maximizing the organization’s profitability.
Real-time data lets casino operators know what the customer is doing now and lets them target their customers with offers when they are most likely to respond positively. Historical data allows the business users the ability to develop predictive models to help determine the likelihood that a customer will act a certain way, such a booking a hotel room or redeeming a direct mail offer. Combining real-time data, historical information and analytic results into real-time decisions allows a casino operator to know which patrons will take particular actions based on the most up-todate information and deliver decisions and recommendations that optimize every patron interaction to improve revenue, growth and retention.
Natalie Osborne is senior industry consultant for SAS Institute’s Hospitality and Travel practice, and an 18+ year veteran of hospitality and hospitality technology solutions development, specializing in analytics and revenue management. Prior to joining SAS, Natalie was the director, product marketing for Minneapolis-based IDeaS Revenue Solutions, where she worked from 2000 to 2011. She is a frequent contributor to industry publications, speaker at industry conferences and is co-author of the SAS and Cornell Center for Hospitality Research blog, “The Analytic Hospitality Executive.”