Not all customers are created equal.
By this definition, not all customers are created equal and not all customers (or prospects) should be treated equally either. It requires that a business understand their customers at a granular level, being able to segment those customers, to have the organizational ability to differentiate between them and being able to provide different levels of service to those segments. The driver for this segmentation is not historic profitability but future lifetime value. Or put more differently-which are going to be the most valuable to you in the long term.
This perspective of customer centricity is covered at length by Peter Fader in his book "Customer Centricity - Focus on the right customers for strategic advantage". A recording of an interview with Peter Fader is available here.
The intended customer experience.
If a business has determined that customer experience (CX) is strategic, then the intended customer experience will be important to them. That is, they will have a very clear view of what they want the customers' perceptions to be when they interact with their brand.
Each business needs to determine for themselves what is the right intended experience for their brand. For it to be perceived as genuine by their customers and their employees, that experience will need to align to the brand promise and the businesses' core values. For it to have strategic value, the experience will need to differentiate it from the competition and be something that can be delivered consistently.
While each brand's customer experience should be unique, there are some common elements that every business must consider. Forrester Research have determined that there are three dimensions1 to a customer's perception of the brand-three foundational components on which the experience can be measured.
- Effectiveness-effective interactions enable customers to achieve their goal.
- Ease-easy interactions let customers achieve their goal with minimal effort.
- Emotion-the best interactions evoke positive emotions and avoid provoking negative ones
Our upcoming annual Voice of the Customer Survey gives all our customers the opportunity to have their say and tell us if the interactions we have are emotionally positive, if they are easy, and if they're able to achieve their goals. The results are extremely valuable in helping us understand our customers' perspective of our brand.
If you're an Epicor customer and you want to make sure you have the opportunity to take part, then go to the following link and opt-in - http://go.epicor.com/SurveyOptIn.html.
"Improving CX Through Business Discipline Drives Growth, The Vision Report In The CX Transformation Playbook” by Harley Manning and Rick Parrish, Updated: March 26, 20181
