2. Customer Orientation & Metrics
- Who owns obsessive focus on sales numbers/trends at the 'top table'?
- Is customer segmentation and 'lifetime-value' mapping in place?
- Do you know how your channels to market/key competitors are evolving?
- Have you got regular competitor mystery shopping/benchmarking in place?
- Do you have key customer research, metrics and measurement in place?
- Does this include market trends – and systematic satisfaction research?
- Are your 'customer journeys' systematically mapped? And updated?
- Are complaints and returns monitored and actioned?
- Do you have truly 'deep' and localised key account/customer knowledge?
- What voice does 'front line' feedback systematically have at the 'tob table'?
- Is your business anticipating and responding accordingly – to these analyses?
Without a comprehensive (and cohesive) approach to collecting, analysing, disseminating, and then ACTING upon key-client and customer data/feedback - studies from both management consultants and business schools (both here in the U.K. and in the U.S.A.) have shown, time and again, the long-term detrimental commercial impact of an organisation's inability to invest in these disciplines...
The senior AJT Associates team has over 40 years combined experience of working in a range of organisations, many highly experienced within these key disciplines - and also within some of those somewhat newer to engaging these skill-sets... Everywhere from engineering/manufacturing, to hospitality and leisure, to financial services and the public sector... Where appropriate, we have recruited customer data and metrics teams from scratch - developing briefs and commissioning research programmes afresh - sometimes for businesses hundreds of years old, yet struggling to keep pace with their clients' increasingly diverse, yet stringent demands...
Andy Thorpe has personally founded, and chaired group-board level 'customer service committees' (tasked with centralising customer data into an I.T./ M.I. led 'single customer view') - directly feeding better informed, and customer-responsive board debates of business strategy, transforming trading performance and the bottom-line... This builds upon the institution of systematic market and competitor research, mystery shopping and benchmarking - as well as centralised complaints analysis... These programmes, and their customer-led ethos are perhaps personified best by the invitation of junior front-line staff to firstly make key presentations - and then observe board-level debates on key customer issues...
As a result, we can help you directly evaluate the cost-benefits of each, or all of these elements of 'top-table' customer orientation... Whether you are engaged in the manufacturing sector - in a retail/supplier role; or in a B2B / wholesaling environment - Or in the public/3rd sector; or engaged in a commercial/directly consumer-facing business... In each case, we have seen first-hand, the significant commercial benefits generated by senior-table customer-orientation programmes, for organisations engaged in every one of these sectors...
Some recent AJT Associates projects...
- We have designed comprehensive customer research campaigns from scratch - managing agency selection and fieldwork; feeding back results and overseeing the implementation of findings...Leading, in more than one case, to award-winning new product developments, launched well ahead of competitors...
- We have successfully scoped; recruited and developed a complete 'customer insight' team from scratch - for a 150yr established client - with no prior experience of marketing knowledge management whatsoever...
- We have overhauled customer satisfaction strategies for a number of high-street retailers - in one case directly driving the development of a new category proposition, resulting in a +19% sales uplift...
- We have mapped multi-channel customer journeys for a financial services client - prior to an extensive cost-review and retail estate overhaul... Developing key themes 5 years ahead of 'market-leading' banks - who only now are advertising customer 'needs' clearly expressed to us, back in 2005...
More details on how our team can rapidly add to your organisation's skill-base, can be found at Our Capabilities and Who We Are.
And a list of satisfied customers - together with details of some of our most recent commercial projects - can be found at Our Clients...
Call us now on 07974-201605 for more information...