Customer-Centric Transformation: What Good Looks Like – Acquisition – Identifying New Prospects – Part 13b of 14

Designing and executing a customer-centric business model requires end to end organisational alignment. Customer-centric capability development cannot take place in isolation to the rest of the business. The customer-centric journey requires a clear quantified understanding of current organisational capability across all 14 capability areas of the SCHEMA® Customer Management framework in the centre of the REAP Customer-Centric Blueprint below. As important as an understanding of current customer management capability is, so too is an understanding of the capability to which the organisation aspires.

Each week I’ll address another single capability area, sharing with you the Transformation Intent to which your organisation should commit to, as well as ‘What Good Looks Like’ for those organisations that have achieved a fairly high level of maturity in the respective capability area.

The REAP Customer-Centric Organisation Blueprint®

 

 

 

This week we are dealing with Acquisition which is one of the four Execution capability areas represented. The Execution layer relates to the capabilities and control levers needed to optimise customer value and includes Retention, Efficiency (understanding cost to serve), Acquisition and Penetration (customer development, cross-sell and up-sell) – collectively referred to as REAP. These are capabilities and initiatives that can be optimised in the short term.

These capabilities support your ability to implement your chosen customer strategies and rely on the fundamental building blocks (Foundations) as well as the Enabling capabilities already discussed in Part 1 to 10 of this series of blog posts.

Each of the four Execution capability areas is made up of sub-components. The Acquisition dimension focuses on the specific, practical activities that will support you to increase both the quality and volume of new customers. Acquisition explores ways in which you can increase the size of your customer universe and your share of it. The 5 sub-components of the Acquisition dimension are ‘Understanding Acquisition,’  ‘Identifying New Prospects,’ ‘Managing Interest,’ ‘Converting Sales,’ and ‘Setting up & Activating.’  Each of these areas is addressed in separate, individual blog posts.

Transformation Intent – Acquisition

“A customer-centric Acquisition approach begins with a clear and intimate understanding of your customer universe and the factors that impact your ability to sell to them. Acquiring your share of this customer universe is achieved through appropriate targeted marketing activity across a broad range of relevant channels and media, and interest generated is managed effectively so that prospects are kept warm until the sale is closed. While the sales process itself should focus on closing the sale, it should also take into account effective lead management, specific sales targets and rewards and careful controls over pricing. Customer-centricity also recognises that new clients have not been secured until you have taken them through an experience-based initiation process, where they are made to feel welcome and are well informed.”

What Good Looks Like – Identifying New Prospects

• The nature of target customers is defined and best potential sources (locations, current suppliers, groupings) of these types of potential customer have been identified.
• Use is made of all relevant channels of influence and referral both at the individual advocate / trusted advisor level and at the level of influencing bodies and networks. This includes the active exploitation of referrals between business units of the organisation.
• All pro-active acquisition marketing activity, across all media including social media, is tightly targeted to ensure the highest probability of gaining an attractive mix of new customers efficiently and cost effectively. Marketing activity is effectively terminated where it is resulting in the identification of a poor mix of prospects.
• Good quality customers who have been lost in the past are targeted for appropriate winback activity, using relevant messages for their reason for leaving, at the right time to ensure the best chance of winning back the most valuable ones.

For more insight into customer-centric business model innovation as well as more insight into this particular area of the REAP Customer-Centric Blueprint, please see my book “The Customer-Centric Blueprint’ – http://amzn.to/ZILg4y

Customer-Centric Transformation: What Good Looks Like – Agility and Workflow – Part 9 of 14

Designing and executing a customer-centric business model requires end to end organisational alignment. Customer-centric capability development cannot take place in isolation to the rest of the business. The customer-centric journey requires a clear quantified understanding of current organisational capability across all 14 capability areas of the SCHEMA® Customer Management framework in the centre of the REAP Customer-Centric Blueprint below. As important as an understanding of current customer management capability is, so too is an understanding of the capability to which the organisation aspires.
Each week I’ll address another single capability area, sharing with you the Transformation Intent to which your organisation should commit to, as well as ‘What Good Looks Like’ for those organisations that have achieved a fairly high level of maturity in the respective capability area.
The REAP Customer-Centric Organisation Blueprint®

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week we are dealing with Agility & Workflow which is one of the six Enabling capability areas represented. The Enablers explore the components needed to energise your transformation and will invariably involve changes that can be planned for within the current business cycle, for implementation in the next budgetary or operating period. These components support your capability to implement your chosen customer strategies and rely on the fundamental building blocks (Foundations) already discussed in Part 1 to 4 of this series of blog posts.
Transformation Intent – Agility and Workflow
“The ability to deliver a customer-centric experience is dependent on the speed at which your organisation can mobilise itself so that you can meet the changing needs of your customers and act on new opportunities as soon as they arise. In order to do this you need an agile decision-making infrastructure that is supported by efficient and technology-enabled processes that integrate teams and deliver on the opportunities for real-time responses.”

What Good Looks Like – Agility and Workflow
• The organisation is set up to take customer insight and feedback through to new or amended processes / propositions quickly and is checking that customers perceive this agility.

• Processes are actively managed to ensure the right people receive the right prompts and information at the right time and are able to action it within defined timelines.

• The opportunities and customer need for real-time working are understood and the relevant data is available to enable clear movement towards this in the most important areas.

• Collaboration between customer-impacting colleagues is encouraged and enabled by relevant technology on an overall basis as well as being targeted at specific areas of need.

• Centres of Excellence are used to formerly incubate and develop good practices in one part of the organisation in a way that is specifically designed to support ‘packaged’ transfer of learning across the enterprise.

For more insight into customer-centric business model innovation as well as more insight into this particular area of the REAP Customer-Centric Blueprint, please see my book “The Customer-Centric Blueprint’ – http://amzn.to/ZILg4y

Customer-Centric Transformation: What Good Looks Like – Technology & Systems – Part 3 of 14

Designing and executing a customer-centric business model requires end to end organisational alignment. Customer-centric capability development cannot take place in isolation to the rest of the business. The customer-centric journey requires a clear quantified understanding of current organisational capability across all 14 capability areas of the SCHEMA® Customer Management framework in the centre of the REAP Customer-Centric Blueprint below. As important as an understanding of current customer management capability is, so too is an understanding of the capability to which the organisation aspires.

Each week I’ll address another single capability area, sharing with you the Transformation Intent to which your organisation should commit to, as well as ‘What Good Looks Like’ for those organisations that have achieved a fairly high level of maturity in the respective capability area.

The REAP Customer-Centric Organisation Blueprint®

This week we are dealing with Technology & Systems which is one of the four Foundational capability areas represented. The Foundations layer includes the fundamental building blocks that support or limit your transformation ability. These capability areas require broad-based input and alignment, without which the operationalization of a customer-centric business model is almost impossible.

Transformation Intent – Technology & Systems

“While customer-impacting technology is a powerful tool to engage your customers in their experience and to efficiently manage their data, its role is to enable the activation and delivery of your customer strategy and not to drive the design and implementation of your business. Transform instead your use of technology and systems so that they support you to innovate the customer experience, take advantage of latest trends and develop both a single and an in-depth view of your customer.”

What Good Looks Like – Technology & Systems

• The development of customer-impacting technology is driven by a specific strategy and has a widely understood architecture that supports major customer trends such as the move towards self-service.
• Systems that are accessible to customers / prospects are monitored and managed with a clear customer experience focus and are evolving in a way that delivers against the principles of Web 2.0.
• Systems used at all customer interfaces provide broad Customer Management functionality accessing a common view of each customer and can be upgraded / changed fast enough to support the Customer Management Strategy.
• The organisation’s customer analysis capability covers all customers at a behavioural and attitudinal level with sufficient history, accessibility and integration to support analysts and operational system users.

For more insight into customer-centric business model innovation as well as more insight into this particular area of the REAP Customer-Centric Blueprint, please see my book “The Customer-Centric Blueprint’ – http://amzn.to/ZILg4y