The problem
The company is very customer focused; however, with no differentiation between the different customer types, their requirements and no measurement on how they were performing against each customer or even each customer group expectations, it was impossible to effectively and systematically drive growth.
The client
The client is a £6m turnover company specialising in the design, manufacture and international sales of specialist temperature and relative humidity sensors required for building management and control systems.
The company’s customers included a number of different organisations and channels which results in a number of different focuses, for instance:
• The end user or “consumer” of the products and services; essentially the person sitting at the desk where the environment is being controlled by the manufacturers product
• The owner of the building
• The contractor or facilities management company managing the building
• The Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) who provides a “total solution” of which the manufacturers product is part
• Distributors
The approach and the solution
The senior management team and a cross section of staff formed an improvement team where activities undertaken included:
• The identification and categorisation of the above five different customer groups
• Linking the above groups to the company’s growth strategy
• Identifying and articulating the different benefits and capabilities that the company delivered to each of the different customer groups
• Linking the measurements systems to the benefits and capabilities delivered to the different customer groups
As an example, the contractor groups were significantly more interested in “speed of delivery” and much less interested in price, after all, the price would be passed to their customer and if the people in building could not work in comfort the effect on productivity would be dramatic. Whereas, the distributor groups were significantly more interested in price and, in order to manage their stock, delivery reliability.
The outcome
• Different customer requirements were more easily understood and accounted for
• Different customer segments were developed along with different messages for each and, more importantly, plans for their execution