Valuing Customers Power

At the very heart of any business are the customers, the buying public, the consumers.  They hold the key to any success.  Of course corporate planning, good corporate and managerial leaderships, investors plowing the money are equally important, but the bread of the dough comes from the patronage of our customers.

In my years of being in the retail business, be it in store operations, merchandising, category management, my role does not end when I have done my responsibilities as a merchandising manager, its an on-going flow and giving much attention on the front-line of the stores, the sales clerks, merchandisers, sales associates, sales personnel, however we call them, they play the bigger part in ensuring the customers who walked by the store aisles are given utmost importance.

In the past decade, businesses around the world have started placing a renewed focus on customers. They’re doing this because they see that customers have more choice than ever before. If customers don’t perceive that a company’s offering is worth what they’ve paid for it, they’ll take their money to a competitor who offers better value. That competitor may be right next door or on the other side of the world. So what do customers value and how can we go about understanding customer drivers?

The idea that business success comes from focusing on customers is not new, and vision and mission statements are full of aspirational language about customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and being customer centric. Yet, some of the most metric-driven companies would be hard pressed to explain how they are measuring and managing the customers’ view of their company’s value to them.

What’s lacking in most companies is a real understanding, alignment and focus on their customers, and a genuine understanding of what value they can provide to their customers. To date, companies have focused on “what they can do to their customers”, rather than “what they can do for their customers”.

Companies have invested heavily in the much-hyped introduction of CRM systems so that they can segment their customers. This then allows them to sell more effectively to them, provide customer support to them at the lowest cost, and target marketing campaigns to them more cost effectively. The only mention of value is the value of the customer through lifetime value calculations. You never hear of CRM systems being introduced to make it easier for the customer, and thereby offer them greater value.

To be successful, businesses need useful and practical ways to capture customer needs, measure how well they’re satisfying those needs compared to the competition, and build action plans based on what customers value to win in the marketplace. Firms of all sizes and in varying industries are struggling to:

• gain a deeper understanding of and agreement on precisely what customers value
• create reliable methods of measuring the value of what they offer compared to the competition
• provide the best value to customers, to employees, and to shareholders; and then establish the connection among these three imperatives
• increase market share and loyalty while maintaining and even improving profitability.

Businesses that know what customers value, know how to deliver this value better than the competition, and know when it’s important to communicate with customers so that they perceive the true value delivered achieve competitive advantage, better business results and increased shareholder value. A growing body of statistical research is proving this common-sense principle.

The “why” of Customer Value Management

There is an emerging art and science of Customer Value Management (CVM) that is proving its worth when it comes to understanding what customers’ value. Firms of all sizes that capture and use customer data with the discipline, passion and understanding they give to operational and financial data are learning that this business practice is well worth the time and money involved. By focusing on understanding customer drivers they are winning in the customer market, they also win in the employment market (attracting and retaining talented people) and in the financial market (attracting and retaining the investment required to keep the business alive and growing).

At the heart of Customer Value Management (CVM) is an understanding of how value is created for the customer by a company’s:

• products, services and business relationships
• overall cost of doing business

Customer Value Management is both a way of thinking and a set of techniques and methods that anyone in business can use to determine where to focus time, energy and money to create value for customers. Research and experience have shown that if you do this better than the competition, you’ll win business and reap the rewards in the form of profit and shareholder value.

Customer Champions, the leading practitioner of Customer Value Management in the UK and Europe, has witnessed firsthand some of the difficulties that companies face while running customer-focused programmes. They have found that, although nearly all major companies in the UK and Europe are conducting some form of customer feedback programme, only one in three plans any actions based on that input, and only one in nine actually implements any change because of it.

The “how” of Customer Value Management

The concept of Customer Value Management is really very simple. It’s about:

• Choosing value: Asking customers in your target market what they value, finding out how they rate the value you deliver compared to the competition, and using the understanding of customer drivers to focus priorities and then decide what value proposition to take to market.
• Delivering value: Making sure your business processes are aligned with your value proposition, and determining what business improvements on your part will deliver greatest value to customers.
• Communicating value: Educating the market on your value proposition and how you’re focusing investment to deliver greater value than the competition.

Keeping Customer Loyalty and Happy

Customer's loyalty is unstable, they easily shift from one product providers as they easily gets bored, that is why building relationships that goes beyond assisting their needs, kept adept with their caprices, no matter at times impossible, I emphasize the importance of "always saying yes, perhaps, will do our best attitude" towards their requests".  This way we make them leaving our stores happy, satisfied and wielding the perceived "power" of their value in our stores.  

We never want them leaving unhappy and unsatisfied as we would want to see them again and become our loyal patron for a very long, long time, and that means our cash registers will keep on ringing because they are their always happy to shop and our royal patrons.