CUSTOMERS
What makes a company successful? Where do higher revenues, profit, and public recognition come from? At first glance it's products that determine a company's success. But in actual fact, customers are behind every product sold and every service rendered.
The challenges for companies in managing their customer portfolio and in acquiring attractive new customers have risen continuously in recent years. Robust strategies, a precise knowledge of customers, and flexible processes are gaining importance because these factors are what enable companies to respond quickly and purposefully to the changing demands of markets, customers, and the competitive environment.
But what are the success factors for successful customer management and for focusing a company on its customers?
Our "market focus" approach sees customers as the main crunch factor and the key controlling factor in sustainably successful corporate management. Customer insights deliver important knowledge and information, which can be used to derive target group strategies and product or channel strategies alike. Studies also demonstrate that successful companies have established customers as a control dimension, in addition to product or geographical metrics.
KEYLENS has spent many years supporting companies in establishing and implementing systematic customer management. We command a wealth of experience covering all four of the classic customer relationship models:
- Continuous customer relationships with end customers
- Customer relationships in traditional consumer goods markets
- Classic B2B customer relationships in supply industries
- Personalized business relationship management in the engineering sector
We support companies in all areas, from taking aspects of their customer management to the next level, such as by establishing customer segmentation, all the way through to focusing the entire organization more strongly on customers by employing the customer centricity approach.
Some of the aspects our consultancy focuses on:
- Customer insight and customer segmentation
- Strategies for customer segments
- Customer centricity
- Segment-specific product, service, and sales strategies
- Contact and lead management
- Customer-specific metrics
SELECTED KEYLENS PROJECT EXAMPLES
Chain of home improvement stores
CHAIN OF HOME IMPROVEMENT STORES
Issue:
Card-based customer loyalty program
Objective:
Developing a card-based customer loyalty program, incl. drawing up the business case for the underlying processes and selecting external service providers
Results:
- We defined the objective of the loyalty program and how it was to be embedded in the existing marketing approach
- Defined the program content, incl. the possible marketing measures and the processes, roles, and responsibilities
- Defined the information flows and the information requirements at the customer touchpoints
- Handled the tendering process for external service providers and evaluated the service providers' bids
- Formulated a detailed implementation plan
KEYLENS success levers:
In-depth expertise in establishing and operating (card-based) loyalty programs and knowledge of potential external partners to run the program
Telecommunications company
TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY
Issue:
Reducing customer churn
Objective:
Conducting a systematic analysis of customer satisfaction and deriving actions for customer retention
Results:
- We systematically analyzed the satisfaction of the company's own customers and that of competitors' customers along the entire customer process
- Supplemented the market research findings with targeted analyses of existing customer data
- Identified, prioritized, and coordinated areas for action, and calculated potential
- Formulated and coordinated a detailed implementation plan, incl. specific activities, tasks, roles, timings, and budgets
KEYLENS success levers:
Specific approach that pools external and internal expertise and incorporates quickly realizable solutions without the need to tie up considerable amounts of the company's own resources
Primary insurer I
PRIMARY INSURER I
Issue:
Multichannel contact management
Objective:
Increasing loyalty, exploiting up-selling potential, and improving efficiency through segment-based management of customer communication
Results:
- We defined the relevant customer segments and strategies
- Identified relevant contact triggers and derived implications for action
- Developed a logic for calculating a cross-channel contact budget based on potential
- Differentiated the way customers are addressed in terms of channel, frequency, and tone
- Adapted to the local specifics in the national sales companies across Europe
KEYLENS success levers:
Pragmatic approach to value-based customer segmentation for setting the contact budget ("inter-practitioner exchange")
Department store company
DEPARTMENT STORE COMPANY
Issue:
Forming lifestyle target groups
Objective:
Identifying new target groups in the market to expand sales and optimize the product range by better meeting target group needs – thereby increasing sales and profits
Results:
- We linked sociodemographic data, consumer behavior, and lifestyles (attitudes and values) to form new, internally homogeneous target groups
- Described these target groups in precise detail
- Translated the target group knowledge into specific requirements for marketing, purchasing, and sales
- Set up continual training for sales assistants in recognizing and addressing the new target groups
- Developed a practical tool that can be used to answer specific questions on customers, products, and advertising programs in relation to specific target groups prior to an investment
KEYLENS success levers:
In-depth methodological knowledge in the practical implementation of lifestyle segmentation
Pharmaceuticals group
PHARMACEUTICALS GROUP
Issue:
Customer centricity
Objective:
Establishing customer centricity as a new management philosophy, using family practice doctors as an example, as a means of getting away from thinking in silos
Results:
- We prepared and embedded an understanding of customer centricity in the company through a mission statement, standard processes, etc.
- Introduced a new type of transversal value segmentation, i.e. across indications, for family practice doctors
- Introduced a new budgeting logic that differentiates between transversal and indication-specific measures
- Optimized marketing communications by embedding a system of thinking in terms of extended campaigns
- Installed various customer-segment-specific measures with a transversal orientation across indications and thereby enabled initial practical experience to be gained with novel communication and service measures
- Initiated a new family practice portal and corresponding training and information measures
KEYLENS success levers:
Transfer of customer centricity knowledge from other industries and projects; introduction of customer value logic to highlight the relevance of family practice doctors in the transversal perspective
Primary insurer II
PRIMARY INSURER II
Issue:
Lead management
Objective:
Putting the end-to-end lead management process on a professional footing to increase total premiums
Results:
- We mapped the purchase-relevant customer processes
- Evaluated all aspects of the lead management process from generation through conversion
- Developed the conceptual basis for identifying, classifying, and developing leads
- Derived the process-side success factors in lead management (roles, responsibilities, interface rules)
- Modeled the quantitative potential
KEYLENS success levers:
Two-stage system for qualifying leads in terms of maturity and customer knowledge
