motivations - c3centricity

10 Ways to Immediately Improve Your Customer Centricity

Posted on November 23, 2021November 21, 2021 by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

We all know that adopting a customer-first strategy is essential for business growth and profitability. However, customer centricity has become even more important today, as a result of all the changes in our customers’ behaviour following the global covid lockdown. We are now even more impatient and demanding of businesses, and quick to complain publicly when things go wrong, or rather when we are not totally satisfied.

All companies need to put their customers clearly at the heart of their organisation. But I know that many struggle, even in more normal times, to be customer centric. They just don’t know where to start. Am I right? If you’re in this situation yourself, then this article is for you. In it I share ten simple actions to accelerate your organisation along its path to an improved customer-first strategy.

#1 Review & Revise the Description of your Target Audience

Do all your brands have a clear description of their target audience? These days we tend to speak about personas or avatars.

Is it as complete as it should be? If not, then regular readers will know about and probably use the C3Centricity 4W™ template for storing all this information. You can download it and get the accompanying workbook for free here.

In your avatar, you must include not only your customers’ demographics and consumption / purchasing habits, but also information about where they do these things, what values they have that you can tap into and what emotions motivate them to purchase and use your brand.

#2 Assess the Optimum Way of Connecting with Your Customers

Do you know the best way to contact your target customers, as well as their preferred place and time to connect?

Review how you communicate with your customers and what information exchange there is at that time. Is it one-way or two? Are you in a monologue or a dialogue?

Obviously the second is what it should be. You can learn far more about your customers by listening, especially when they are ready to share their information with you.

For an original take on engaging your customers see “You’re missing out on a Free Communication Channel!” (Any guesses what it is?)

#3 Identify the Needs Your Brand is Addressing

Do you know what needs your customer has and which of them you are tapping into?

They certainly have more than one need, but you must identify and address only one at a time.

If you attempt to address more than one and especially if they are not sequential, your customer may be confused.

Mixed brand messages on what the brand can do for them, will leave your customers perplexed. This will, in turn, reduce the likelihood that they will be convinced your offer can meet their needs and objectives.

Knowing where your brand sits on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has one additional benefit. It can increase the success of regional and global launches by identifying cultures with similar levels of a specific need. Continue Reading

How to Segment for Actionability & Success

Posted on May 3, 2013March 28, 2020 by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Last week I shared the twelve questions you need to be able to answer in order to ensure you really know your target audience. If you missed it, you can read it here.

The post certainly attracted a lot of hits, so I hope you have all found ways to improve your own customer understanding as a result of reading it. Comments welcome as always.

All brands and services need a group of customers that they are going to satisfy, since it is impossible to appeal to everyone most of the time. This means that you will need to make a choice about who you are going to target, which also implies that you must accept that you will also ignore some other category users.

Last week I read a really great post by Colin Nelson of HYPE on how a simple segmentation of employees enabled Swisslog to understand and improve participation in their innovation ideas campaigns. I highly recommend reading this case study as it shows how even the simplest grouping of a market – in this case employees – can be both actionable and successful.

Segmentation can be as simple or as complex as you like, but is essential for all successful businesses. If you yourself are struggling to understand your consumers, employees, retail customers, or any other group of people, perhaps a segmentation exercise is what you need to run.

Where to start

When deciding who to target, most companies will start by conducting some sort of data gathering. This could be as simple as identifying your users by what you observe, such as young men or large families, or as complex as gathering your customers’ values and motivations. As mentioned in last week’s post, the deeper the understanding of your target customer is, the more likely it is to provide you with a competitive advantage. The same also goes for segmentation.

Choosing the right group of customers to satisfy with your product or service is essential for business success. So is doing everything you can to understand them as deeply as possible. Truly customer centric organisations excel at doing both; do you? Why not share your own success story on segmentation?

Need help in understanding and segmenting your current category customers or defining which group to target?

Let us help; contact us here.

This post has been adapted from one that was published on C3Centricity in May 2012.

C³Centricity uses images from Dreamstime.com and Kozzi.com

12 Things you Need to Know about your Target Customers

Posted on April 26, 2013August 14, 2019 by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

How well do you know your target customers? I mean really know them? Are they men, women, young, old, Fortune 100 companies, local businesses?

If you can at least answer that, then you have the basics, but how much more could you know about them? Can you answer the following twelve questions?

I was recently working with a local service company who was looking for help with their online presence. They were keen to get more active on social media and had asked for advice about the best platforms, optimal frequency of publishing and possible content ideas.

However they were in for a surprise. Rather than getting straight onto the “sexy” topic of social media, I started by taking them through the basics of target customer identification. Lucky for them that I did! When we had finished the exercise, we had actually found five different targets for them to address, rather than just the two they had been addressing until now. This clearly would have an impact on both where, what and how they communicated online.

These are the twelve questions that enabled us to brainstorm, identify and then complete a better and more complete description of their target customers. Their use also resulted in clear differentiated segments for their services – three more than they had originally thought! How would you like to double your own market potential? Read on:

WHO DEMOGRAPHICS: OK this is usually a “no-brainer” and is how most organisations describe their customers. Not really original and definitely not competitive, but still the essential foundation.
WHAT THEY USE: Whether you are offering a product or service, you need to know what your customers are using today. And not only for your category, but in adjacent categories too. What do they use – if anything – if your product / category is not available?
WHAT THEY CONSUME: Here we need to underst and what types of information and media they are consuming; what do they read, watch, listen to in their spare time. Which social media do they use, what websites do they consult on a regular basis?
WHAT THEY DO: How do your customers spend their time? What type of lifestyle do they have? What are their hobbies? What do they do all day, and in the evening and at weekends?
WHAT THEY BUY: This is where you describe their current category purchasing habits. How frequently and what quantity do they buy? Do they have regular buying habits? Do they do research before buying or repurchasing? Do they compare and if so how, where, why?
WHERE THEY CONSUME: Is the category consumed in home, in work, on vacation? With friends, with their partner, with friends? Are there certain surroundings more conducive to consumption? What makes it so?
WHERE THEY BUY: Do your target customers have certain places and times they buy? Is it an habitual or impulse purchase? Is it seasonal?
WHERE THEY READ: Today “read” covers not just traditional media but new media as well.

10 Ways to Improve your Customer Centricity Today

Posted on August 10, 2012March 28, 2020 by Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Many of you know that it is vital to improve customer centricity today. You must put the customer clearly at the heart of your business.

But I also know that many of you struggle with this, because you just don’t know where to start. Am I right? Then this article is for you.

This week I give you ten simple actions to accelerate your organisation along its path to improved customer centricity.

#1 Review & revise the description of your target audience

Do all your brands have a clear description of their target audience? These days we tend to speak about personas.

Is it as complete as it should be? If not, then use our C3Centricity 4W™ Persona Template and complete the who, what, where and why for each one.

Include not only demographics and consumption / purchasing habits but also information about where they do these things, what values they have that you can tap into and what emotions motivate them to use your brand.

#2 Assess the optimum way of connecting with your customers

Do you know the best way to contact your target customers, as well as their preferred place and time to connect?

Review how you communicate with your customer and what information exchange there is at that time. Is it one-way or two? Are you in a monologue or a dialogue?

Obviously the second is what it should be. You can learn far more about your customers when they are ready to share their information with you.

I hope this list has helped you to define a few areas that need revision in your organisation. Even actioning just one of them will improve your customer centricity. Of course doing them all will ensure that your customer is really at the heart of your business, as well as in the hearts of all your employees.

If you would like to know just how customer centric you are today, why not complete the C3C Evaluator™? It will help you to identify where you are today as well as how to prioritise any needed changes in your organisation.

For more information on making your organisation more customer centric, please check out C3Centricity for additional inspiring articles and then contact us here:

https://www.c3centricity.com/

C³Centricity.com uses images from Dreamstime.com

Tag: motivations