Customer Focused Strategy and Intimacy 

Successful organizations around the world have realized that long-term customer relationships, managed properly, are critical to sustained profitability over time. This understanding is based on the growing evidence of the superiority of customer focused strategies.

"The cost of recruiting a new customer is considerably higher than maintaining an existing relationship with a customer"

"Matching your offering with your existing customers' needs and expectations is substantially more cost-effective than constantly recruiting new customers".

However, experience has shown that the process of transitioning into a customer focused organization is a complex one. Creating such an organization, that is attuned to customers' needs and expectations, without utilizing the appropriate processes and tools for handling this massive change is bound to fail. While all customer focused initiatives start out as Mom and Pop type organizations that know each of its customers personally, in reality, implementation of these changes in complex and massive service & sales operations requires a different approach.

Challenges

Some already customer focused organizations are looking to enhance customer experience and intimacy. Others are faced with the daunting task of transforming themselves from a product-based to a customer focused organization. All organizations considering these issues are faced with the following challenges:

• The Integration of communication channels to create a unified customer experience
• Translation of brand identity and values into routine processes and interactions
• Standardization of customer experience in a way that minimizes dependency on specific employee personalities and experience
• Balancing the need to support customer focused strategy and processes with extensive information system requirements and the spiraling costs of implementation and integration of these systems
• How to align internal incentives, measurement systems and other motivators with customer focused strategy and customer value without losing control over traditional measures of profitability and cash-flow

Conclusion

Customer focused strategy and intimacy is a part of the overall business strategy of the organization, which puts the customer in the center of the overall organizational activities in the way that it offers its products, measures itself and behaves.

Implementation of this customer focused strategy is a complex process that continuously balances between the ideals of customer focused strategy and the reality of operational processes.

For more information on how NGG Consulting can help you build and implement a customer focused strategy, please Contact Us