Putting the customer first
In the third of six articles for Post&Parcel, Dennis Gilham addresses ‘becoming serious about putting customers at the centre of operations’. In the first two parts we looked at the importance of customer insight, knowledge that is valuable to an organisation and its relevance to developing a strong business strategy and to cost cutting. Now how do we become serious about putting customers at the centre of operations?
It is said: “Be obsessed about customers and not markets. A market never paid a bill”. Natural segmentation and brand value are probably top of the most important considerations in becoming customer centric. We don’t segment customers, customers segment themselves; customers have particular needs and wants, and it’s these that identify what group or segment customers are in. So we look for characteristics that describe an important group of customers with common buying motives. In the postal sector this philosophy can be applied to senders of mail, predominantly businesses, and receivers, predominantly consumers.
Once these natural segments are identified an organisation can focus on its real strengths and brand values to develop a unique position and new value propositions. I often see organisations use mail volume, verticals and industries as ways to group customers. Approaches based on needs driven motivators are still in the minority. Consequently, it is difficult to achieve good contextual driven marketing where customers are presented rationale to choose your offer because they can identify with it and use it to get some needed job done.
Start by having conversations with customers to uncover the issues that drive their needs and behaviours, the problems as well as those all important silent needs, for example, more end-to-end visibility, more control over delivery, more process efficiency, more management support… Once segments emerge a sufficient sample of qualified customers can be interviewed to better quantify and build confidence in the results. A structured process is best, tuned to the size and needs of the organisation. The organisation can then become serious about putting customers at the centre of their operations.
Strong marketing strategies align with real customer segments and have tailored offers based on customer insight, these topics are quite tangible. However, it is also important to consider such intangibles, as brand value. Brand is the customer perception of value coming from the organisation and it may not be what the organisation wants. If customer perception is to be aligned with the real strengths of the organisation and positioning of the offer then the brand proposition and value must be well co-ordinated across all operations of the company. Dealing with brand piecemeal is guaranteed to do nothing for the success of the business.
Next time we consider aligning key success factors for the postal sector with the needs of customers.
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In a nutshell |
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Dennis Gilham: Biography
A Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing with over 30 years experience of delivering customer facing solutions in the postal sector. Dennis has held senior industry roles as Head of Corporate Partnerships, Group Business Line Director, Group Director of Product Marketing and Director of Research & Development. He has built a unique set of skills and knowledge in promoting new solutions for business customers of all sizes in mail, express and parcels.
Having worked with Posts worldwide, contributing to their business development through customer insight, marketing strategy and innovative solutions, Dennis now has the opportunity to help postal management in his capacity as Independent Strategy Advisor.
+44 (0)79 74 97 50 00
