Data Consultancy Blogs

The Customer Experience(CX) and Customer Centricity – vital components for Companies Today.

CX strategy starts at the top with a vision from the CEO/MD leading the company toward becoming a Customer Centric organisation with everyone knowing what their role is when interacting with the customer at all touch points. These touch points include everything from when they first engage (via the website, mail, phone) through to sales, marketing, operations, finance, service and support.

Let’s start with a few stats delivered as part of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) CX course from research done by Dimension Data.

• 81% of Companies recognise CX as a competitive differentiator
• CX is the No.1 most important strategic performance measure
• 79% of Companies can evidence cost savings
• 84% of Companies can evidence an uplift in revenue/profits

Businesses fail to recognise that looking after their existing customers is a far more cost effective way of investing their marketing budgets.

86% of Customers will pay more for a better Customer experience with that company.

However, 82% of Customers stopped doing business after a bad Customer Experience.

When it is 5 to 10 times as much to win a new Customer than nurture existing ones, a CX strategy has to be the number one priority.

5 Things that you can do now:

1. Profile and Segment your customers by value – the 80/20 rule
2. Describe in detail who your ideal Customers are for each of your products and/or services – the Who, What, Where, Why
3. Get to know your customers via surveys, market research, Social Media
4. Understand what your brand image stands for with your customers to indicate the “health” of your brand
5. Break out your brands’ attributes – the Rational (functional), Emotional (subjective) and the Societal (relationship to what others think)

Also, according to a recent Forrester report, 91% of CEO’s in top performing companies view Customer Experience skills to be a top priority for the future. Interestingly, only 48% of CEO’s in low performing companies see it as a priority.

One statistic stands out which is from the US where Sprint saved $1.7billion dollars by paying more attention to their customers.

Get in touch today and let me show you how you can make your Company more Customer Centric.

You’ve Got Loads of Customer Data- But What Are You Doing With It?

As your business has grown, you have accumulated multitudinous amounts of Customer data which lies within your IT infrastructure across your company’s departments.

So much Customer data can appear disorganised and disconnected from those who really need to access it especially if you are in the Marketing and Sales operations where data intelligence is vital if you want to find out about Customer interactions and I am not just talking about CRM systems.

Understanding how your Customers engage with your business starts with interrogating all the data from different departments and systems such as Operations and Finance and find out where the relevant Customer Touchpoints are. You can then integrate this with your CRM system which will have the other data such as web analytics, social media management, call centre/ support, values etc and organise it in one manageable area.

Once your Marketing and Sales team knows how your Customers are engaging with you, you can use this information to reach out to your Customer base and start to generate regular communications with them in the form of surveys, follow ups and referrals. This will also help you to understand who your “ideal” Customer is across your products and/or services.

Adding this customer demographic segmentation and profiling will further enhance your knowledge of the data so you can develop the top 20% of customers and move the other 80% up the value chain. All this will undoubtedly give you an edge against your competitors as many businesses don’t manage the data as they should, especially when it comes to finding out more about their Customers.

Let’s meet up or have a chat over the phone so I can explain how you can do this and provide a complimentary “proof of concept” on how you can get more from your existing Customers.

Call me on 07786 228553 or contact me here NOW and I look forward to hearing from you.

Attracting More Customers Using Demographics

For B2C Marketers, attracting more customers using demographics is a powerful tool for any and every B2C business. Marketing is arguably the most important business cost as it is an investment to acquire more customers or clients and therefore must be carefully deployed across the marketing mix.

We’ve all heard the saying ‘half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half’ believed to be said by US businessman John Wanamaker so to win new customers and generate additional sales from existing customers, it needs to be done cost effectively.

Demographics is a powerful solution when looking for more customers or clients. Through the lifestage and lifestyle process, Customers want specific products or services at a certain times in their life so  targeting the most appropriate types of people to sell to, at the right time, will ensure that money is not wasted on selling products that don’t match the interests of your target market.

So the question ‘how can demographics find you more customers’ is supported with other thoughts like:

• What relevant markets could be targeted based on housing type e.g you may struggle to promote gardening services to people living in apartments.
• Who is more likely to want my products/ services – by gender or by age?
• What about commuters – do your products or services have an appeal to this market in which case there are probably other channels to consdider such as publications or promotional channels.

How will Effective Use of Demographics Help You Increase Sales?

The more you know about which customer type is most likely to use your product, the easier it is to develop a profile of your customer. This customer or client profile can identify all the key areas that you need such as gender, age range, housing type, education background, interests/ hobbies, family size and make-up, levels of wealth, car ownership etc. Knowing how your customers think is also important – are they instinctively savers or spenders, are they interested in convenience, are they brand buyers, do they buy for quality or expediency? This is where a quality UK demographic analysis system can help you to answer these questions.

Running a business is about serving the needs of your customers. No Customers = No business. Understanding the needs of your potential customers is vital if you want to find more of them and once known, this knowledge can generate the answers to such questions as:

• Where should I promote my product or service?
• Where in terms of physical locations do potential customers live?
• Which promotional channels should I use?
• Where should I locate my business or additional retail or service units?
• How should I talk to my customers, what tone of voice should I use?
• What key benefits do your products have for your customers?
• What are they buying from you, is it a product or is it a convenience? Are they buying a drill or a hole?

The answer to the question ‘how do I get more customers’ is to first establish what type of people you are looking for and then, once known,  you can start planning to find more customers.

Call Jamie Allen now at 07786 228553 or contact me here.

7 Reasons Why You should Profile Your Customer Database

By profiling your database you will know who your ideal customers are and give them a superior customer engagement experience. You can then use that information to both generate additional sales from your existing customers as well as being able to find new customers who are more likely to be interested in buying from you.

1. A high customer engagement achieves 50% higher revenue/sales, 34% higher profitability and 55% higher share of wallet (B2B Gallup poll)
2. Knowing who your ideal customer is improves customer service, gets better customer retention, higher conversion rates on new services/products, an improved overall customer lifetime value (CLV) and a superior customer engagement experience.
3. Knowing the profile of the Customer means that time and money is maximised to develop more business from existing customers as well as getting the “Right” new ones.
4. Developing and Retaining existing customers is 10 times cheaper than getting new ones.
5. Providing a great customer experience can help create loyal brand advocates, who are more likely to spread positive word of mouth about your brand.
6. Strengthening brand loyalty can then lead to higher spend. Brand advocates will often spend more, purchase more items and return to the business more frequently.
7. Reinforces to your customers why you’re different from your competitors and that you’re a unique entity so they continue to do business and interact with you.

Give me a call on 07786 228553 or contact me on ja@jamie-allan.com and let’s arrange a chat over a coffee.

Getting the Business

You’ve done all the groundwork – NOW get the business.

Here’s 6 of the best that will make that happen.

Your website is sorted ready for enquiries;  your database is profiled so you know who to talk to in the right market with the right message; and all your marketing has been produced, sent out and emailed.

Now you need to convert all this activity into sales leads and ultimately, paying customers so follow these rules.

1. When you follow up be persistent as it will take more than one letter, one  email, one phone call to actually get a quality response. In fact don’t be surprised if you have to make up to 12 follow up calls!!
2.  Measure all your marketing activity; make changes to messages and headlines and test new ideas through social media, email and direct response.
3. Make sure you try ALL the avenues within the online and offline marketing mix and measure their effectiveness – The choices are many including seminars and exhibitions
4. Create a referral programme for customers to pass on recommendations to their friends and business contacts + get testimonials
5. Create a video(s) of what you do in the form of “help” guides and create free information leaflets for download
6. Create interesting web content that is related to your business either from news items or within your industry and send links to your contacts

If you want some help on this please call me Jamie Allan on 07786 228553 or contact me here.