thefunnel

A while ago I got involved in doing some brand research around customer intimacy. The company I was doing this for had selected this as their strategy (out of three possible ones according to some marketing gurus: customer intimacy, product leadership and operational excellence) and wanted to know how they were doing. The attached document briefly discusses the methodology. In the end, companies can call their strategies whatever they want, but if the brand attributes doesn’t resonate with their customers or a chosen strategy isn’t economically viable something have to change.    Brand Value Drivers in B-2-B

I was asked why I decided to call this blog “thefunnel”?  Briefly. I think the traditional linear marketing funnel (awareness through loyalty) is a good metaphor for us in marketing to remember that customers can be in any place in the funnel, which will have an impact on all elements of communication. It is also a reminder that there’s always the next step in the funnel and an ultimate objective to achieve an outcome such as sales and loyalty. In addition it’s a reminder that the traditional linear funnel is obsolete, and that understanding the customers decsion process is much more challenging today than it used to be, due the web, social media, choice, interaction between on-line and off-line experiences, fragmentation of media and pull marketing in general.

A while ago I finalized a major customer satisfaction research project for a company.

The objective of the research was to identify customer needs and to determine the company’s level of service performance. The main survey was conducted by telephone.

The respondents were asked various questions in the areas of partnership and supplier expectations.

One of the areas explored was to understand the difference between basic and crucial service factors, basic being factors that any supplier would have to offer to be considered, and crucial the ones that will be critical when customers choose their suppliers.

For many respondents, price was a key factor – it is cited as both a basic and a crucial issue – ease of working with a supplier, partnership and honesty were often mentioned as crucial factors.

In summary, one can say that the key basic requirements related to technical expertise and financial stability, whereas the crucial ‘loyalty’ factors relate to the ongoing relationship – honesty, openness, making realistic promises and keeping them, easy of doing business and other aspects of service. In addition both the basic and crucial factors were ranked for overall importance. This combined created an interesting view of customer satisfaction attributes where all the factors were on two different scales. Summary report will be published soon. Stay tuned.