Riley

Key takeaways

• Bikeshedding is the tendency we have to spend excessive time on trivial matters in meetings, often glossing over important ones.
• Bikeshedding is damaging because it wastes very valuable time and, more importantly, leads to insufficient discussion of important issues.
• To avoid bikeshedding, set a clear purpose for all meetings (and eliminate conversations about other issues), only invite necessary people, appoint a decision maker and have the decision maker set clear parameters for the meeting.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/06/17/how-to-avoid-meetings-about-the-trivial-aka-bikeshedding/

Key takeaways

1. We normally focus on analyzing recency, frequency and monetization of the customer but by adding a new KPI, clumpiness, we get a much better understanding of their expected value.
2. Clumpiness refers to the fact that people buy in bursts and that those customers could be extremely valuable.
3. Clumpiness can help you better segment players, predict VIPs and target your reactivation efforts and spend.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/06/24/lifetime-value-part-30-why-clumpiness-should-be-one-of-the-kpis-you-focus-on/

Key takeaways

• Evolution Gaming, the largest Live Dealer provider, recently announced a bid to acquire NetEnt, the largest slots provider for $2+ billion.
• The deal, in that Evo is the acquirer, shows that Live Dealer is eclipsing slots in the casino ecosystem.
• For real money operators, they need to ensure they balance resources around both Live Dealer and slots while social casino companies need to figure out the best way to embrace this opportunity.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/07/01/why-evos-2-billion-acquisition-of-netent-is-more-important-to-both-igaming-and-social-casino-than-you-think/

Key takeaways

• People who wander around a retail location spend more than ones who immediately find what they are looking for and retailers optimize to create this jiggliness. Online casinos and games can also build in jiggliness so players find new games and offerings rather than simply quickly go to the one they are looking to play.
• While satisfaction with customer service positively impacts profitability, the relationship is not linear. Improvements have a strong impact when players are highly dissatisfied (and that is corrected) or when customers with great service make further improvements, companies in the middle often do not see a positive ROI on CS improvements.
• A relationship between two variables does not show one is causing the other, to have causation there must be a relationship plus temporal antecedence plus the absence of a third variable driving both factors.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/07/15/customer-analytics-tips-for-gaming-companies/

Key takeaways

1. Many important initiatives, from new products to operational efficiency, bog down and die in the middle phase. They initially have momentum but stall once the initial burst dies down.
2. To MOVE projects through this middle phase, the Middle element needs a clear and concrete strategy and you need an Organizational structure with capacity to complete the initiative.
3. The final keys to getting through the middle phase are Valor, making tough decisions and prioritizing the initiative, and getting Everyone involved.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/07/29/how-to-get-your-big-initiatives-done/

Key takeaways

• While Operational Analytics are a focus primarily in retail and traditional businesses, there are many best practices that iGaming and social game companies can leverage.
• Forecasting is central to generating and earmarking resources but is often a challenge for game companies, rather than trying to create a point forecast create a range based on moving averages and looking at standard deviation. For new products, create a simulation that will show the distribution of potential outcomes and the risks and rewards possible.
• You need one, and only one, distinct goal and then optimize your strategy around that goal; it’s impossible to optimize for multiple goals. Use constraints to incorporate what used to be additional goals.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/08/12/how-operations-analytics-can-help-online-gaming-companies/

Key takeaways

1. A sole reliance on customer input and feedback, traditional market research, is built on a model of human decision making that assumes humans are rational, while in practice we are not.
2. Not only do people provide a response inconsistent with their actions, they often do not understand the underlying causes of their behavior.
3. Use one or multiple tools that show actual decision making, such as ABn testing or looking at reactions to similar initiatives in adjacent industries, rather than relying on what customers believe is their preference.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/08/26/the-risks-of-market-research/

Key takeaways

• You need to align performance evaluations with the underlying factors that create success; deconstruct what leads to the outcomes you want and then assess people on those factors.
• Some common problems when evaluating people include context (attributing results to a person when the environment drove success or failure), interdependence (assessing on an individual level a result that was driven by a team), self-fulfilling prophecies (people perform consistent with expectations) and reverse causality (we attribute causality to correlation, even though the factors may not be related or may be in the other direction).
• You should assess how your team or company works as a network, looking at the relationships, and then encourage and grow ones that lead to desired outcomes.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/09/09/people-analytics-for-online-gaming/

Key takeaways

• Data shows that trying to create an exceptional customer experience has virtually no impact on loyalty and engagement, however, reducing the effort the customer must exert does improve loyalty,
• The best way to measure this effort is CES score, which is based on a statement, “the company made it easy for me to handle my issue,” after which the customer is asked to answer (on a 1–7) whether they agree or disagree with that statement.
• The keys to implementing successfully an effortless experience program are minimizing channel switching, avoiding repeat contacts, engineering the customer service interaction experience, building the control quotient, creating the right culture and optimizing the purchase experience.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/09/23/how-to-manage-your-customer-service-to-have-the-biggest-impact-on-your-profits/

Key takeaways

• A powerful way to find a competitive advantage is to do the opposite of what other companies in the industry are doing. Mature industries tend to converge, creating an opportunity to appeal to customers who do not like the homogenous offerings.
• To uncover the opportunity, first list the primary characteristics and elements currently in the category and then ask yourself what would an offering look like if we did the exact opposite.
• This strategy represents a particularly appealing opportunity in the social casino and real money gaming spaces, where the offering has largely converged.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/11/04/building-a-strategy-around-doing-the-opposite/

Key takeaways

• AI driven recommendation engines, popularized on Amazon and Netflix, have gone from being a competitive advantage in online and mobile apps to part of the cost of doing business.
• While AI recommendations are often closer to what customers want, people trust human recommendations more when it is based on hedonic or experiential factors, and trust machines more when it is based on utilitarian factors; this is referred to as word-of-machine effect.
• When presenting recommendations, you must be cognizant of word-of-machine effect; for recommendations around hedonistic properties try to bring in a human element (augmented intelligence) or explain that these are better recommendations.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/12/02/word-of-machine-effect-with-recommendation-engines/

Key takeaways

1. Less than 50 percent of people are satisfied with that job, and Covid has made the situation more dire.
2. The key to improving employee satisfaction, and growing productivity, is evolving from a leader-follower approach (where you tell people what to do) to a leader-leader approach (where people control their decision-making.
3. To move to a leader-leader organization, you need to empower your team (including asking them how to empower them better) and encourage deliberate action where they vocalize what they are doing rather than ask what to do.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/12/09/turn-your-company-around/

Key takeaways

1. Bad profits are revenues earned at the expense of customer relationships.
2. Examples include exorbitant airline change fees, unreasonable bank fees, and contracts that lock users into a bad experience.
3. Bad profits, while boosting short-term numbers, reduce the lifetime value of customers and make them more likely to churn.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2015/02/26/how-bad-profits-can-kills-your-company/

Key takeaways

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS), a great tool to measure customer satisfaction and create a user experience that generates higher growth, and it can also be applied to internal interactions between business units to enhance efficiency.
2. Most companies simply measure internal efficiency by budget, with a lower budget implying higher efficiency even if it is not the optimal way of driving the business.
3. NPS allows fast feedback and allows business units to uncover the root cause of issues.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2016/11/09/nps-is-not-just-for-customers/

Key takeaways

• While it is important not to underestimate your competitors, you also should not consider them perfect.
• Industry leaders often maintain their position due to certain core factors and their other initiatives can be flawed, do not assume everything they do is right.
• Simply because a competitor decided to pass on an apparent opportunity does not mean they made the correct decision, they may have misjudged the opportunity and left an opening for you.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2016/12/07/maybe-your-competitors-are-not-that-smart-after-all/

Key takeaways

• Rather than trying to sound the smartest at a meeting, you should aim to be the dumbest.
• It is more important to surround yourself with great people who will bring performance to a level higher than any individual can achieve.
• You not only need to get input from everyone but actually use the input to come up with better solutions than you are initially proposing.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2016/05/25/try-to-be-the-dumbest-person-in-the-room/

Key takeaways

1. While most agree that a Blue Ocean strategy has the highest long-term returns, many fear it is too risky to pursue from a personal career perspective.
2. The reality is that it is actually the less risky approach, as the underlying odds favor success via a Blue Ocean approach.
3. Given the challenges of trying to win in a competitive industry, finding an uncontested market and growing it is a less risky approach.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2016/03/30/why-blue-ocean-is-actually-the-safe-route/

Key takeaways

1. Given the increasing costs of acquiring new users and players, more emphasis should be placed on reactivating users who have lapsed.
2. Lapsed users are attractive targets as they already have shown an interest in your product, they are familiar with it and you can use their historical data to craft the best win-back proposition.
3. To run a successful reactivation campaign, you need to segment lapsed players by how likely they are to return, their value once they return, what offer is most likely to re-engage them and what win-back strategy will be most profitable.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2016/04/06/regaining-churned-players/

Key takeaways

• Most social media marketing is failing because of the outdated notion of creating branded content. Huge social advertisers, like Red Bull and Coke, fail to get a fraction of the mindshare of social media celebrities like PewDiePie.
• Crowdculture brings together enthusiasts and advocates of certain beliefs and interests through social media, disintermediating traditional entertainment.
• To brand effectively with social media, companies should target crowdcultures.
• Most brands chase after trends but hundreds of companies are doing exactly the same. By targeting novel ideologies flowing out of Crowdcultures, brands can assert a point of view that stands out in the overstuffed environment.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2016/04/20/branding-is-dead-long-live-crowdculture/