Satisfying customers

(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)

Everybody has customers, just broaden the horizon of them.

There are special relationships:

\- Non-Commercial organisations: funded by government ; people who receive service do not pay directly, but indirectly. Customers: Service users, government, taxpayers

\- Voluntary organisations: not even indirect payment; Customers: service users, donors or funders, volunteer staff.

\- B2b organisations: not to individuals but to organisations. Customers: a lot.

\- Internal services: normally no customer pays but do not have a choice of another provider of service.

\- Customers and consumers: If you buy food you normally do not eat it alone. Make the distinction.

All customers and suppliers are different. To visualize complex supplier-customer relationships represent the organisation as a chain.

Pareto’s Law states 80 per cent of the effects in a system arise from 20 per cent of the causes.

You should think of marketing as the creation and distribution of customers and satisfaction for an appropriate return on resources and effort. It has to be customer-centered or is nothing and it takes 6 times more money to generate a new customer than it does to keep an old one.

The market mix, when viewed with the 4Ps model looks like:

\- Product: what is being marketed

\- Price: how much cost to whom

\- Place: distribution system, where

\- Promotion: communication with actual and potential customers

This is seller oriented and you can also use the 4Cs model which is more customer oriented started by the Committee of Marketing Organisations (COMO).

\- Customers’ needs and wants: use market research, forecasting, new product development, product management and budgeting

\- Costs to the customer: pricing policy

\- Customer convenience: distribution

\- Communicating with customers: sales management, advertising, sales promotion

You need to understand your customers which, when done well, can help you serve customers’ needs better. Market research involves distributing as well as collecting formal and informal information about customers. Sources can be secondary (from existing sources) or primary (formally commissioned studies).

When communicating with customers try to identify the group you want to talk to, then define the message you want to communicate and finally select the medium for communication.

It is always helpful to use segmentation to divide customers in groups with some common characteristics.