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Constantin Măgdălina, Emerging Trends and Technologies Expert

Point of view

15 February 2017

Customer relationship – a never ending story

Author: Constantin Măgdălina, EmergingTrends & Tehnologies Expert

The spell of desires

A new chorus has cast a spell over the business world: "customer relationship". Sometimes real, other times

mimicked, the relationship with the consumer is often limited to the statement "we care about you". Obviously, this

overtly concern reveals an economic interest natural for any activity that aims to yield profit.

"The consumer is our focus" or "our commitment to the consumer is" or "our customers are the most important

partners" are just some of the formulas most commonly used by companies in their public communication.

If there is no symmetry between what companies communicate and what they actually deliver, the relationship with

the consumer is limited to either a customer service department with a purely administrative role or simply to an

unprofessional PR.

The reality test

As in any business field, there are companies that excel in building relationships with consumers and others still

struggling. The former are leaders in their field, and even propose methods for measuring the performance that

become standards in the industry, the latter play within the statistical margin of error of the market share.

For companies concerned with an integrated approach of the relationship with the consumer, the three most

important ways of building this relationship and strengthen a customer-focused organizational culture are the

following ones:

1. Voice of the customer

This method involves understanding the critical customer requirements and specific needs beyond basic

expectations from a product or service.

The method involves identifying customer needs and their classification as:

“Must be” needs – identified based on returns, complaints, lawsuits, analysis of customers, lost market share,

references.

Primary needs – identified with the help of focus group, interviews, feedback from the sales team, market

research, recorded calls.

Untold needs but which lead the consumer experience up to a higher level - identified by observation,

personal relationship with the customer and fulfilled through innovation.

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Constantin Măgdălina, Emerging Trends and Technologies Expert

An important aspect about the voice of the customer refers to the way customers define and prioritizes the needs and

expectations from a product / service. From this point of view the voice of the customer comprises the following

aspects:

1. Quality – the features of the product/service

2. Cost – the hidden costs

3. Delivery – the readiness/delays in delivering the product/service against expectations

4. Service and safety – the after-sale support

5. Social responsibility – the compliance with legislation, environment protection etc.

2. Collecting information from every touch point with the customer

This method helps in measuring the processes capacity within the company to meet customer expectations without

additional effort. On the quality of information collected and of the measurement system depends the analysis and

interpretation of consumer responses.

Pragmatically speaking, a company that provides services to address the relevant customer needs should:

Making an analysis of activities with value for the customer. In other words "for how much of what I do is the

customer willing to pay". Often the client relationship has to suffer from inadequate allocation of resources with

value for customer. A lot of opportunities to improve the relationship are missed because worthless activities are

so rooted in processes that go unseen, and resources that could be allocated for meeting requirements relevant

forthe client becomes opportunity cost.

Identifying the causes leading to the qualification of the customer experience as very bad or very good.

In this respect the most easily accessible method is "5 WHY’s diagram". Once the problem is identified by

addressing the question "why is this happening?" (generally for 5 times in a row) to the intermediate identified

causes, we get to the root cause.

Distinguishing between correlation and causality. When data are correlated, two variables can be related,

but neither of them is cause for the other. For example an increase in sales may not be necessarily the cause to

an increase in advertising. In analysing the data, it is important not to say that a correlation is a causality. Only if

this distinction is correctly made, companies can make relevant decisions.

3. The improvement of costumer relationship

It can be made after conducting the analysis and interpretation of information gathered. Methods for generating team

solutions are: brainstorming, the 6 hats technique (associated to a role that each team member plays once they wear

a hat), lateral thinking, mind-mapping followed by the development of selection criteria for solutions depending on the

time required for implementation, cost / benefit, impact on the root cause.

By implementing a pilot project based on listening to the voice of the customer, analysing of the information collected

and selecting the solutions which will improve the relationship with consumers, the company tests its impact on

customer satisfaction and builds a customer-centric culture.

Take aways

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Constantin Măgdălina, Emerging Trends and Technologies Expert

For a company, if the profit is the rationale of 'having', the relationship with the consumer is the rationale of

'being'. The company exists and thrives to the extent that it listens to the consumer’s voice and understands the

critical customer requirements.

Decoding the needs, classification and identification of the root cause of customer dissatisfaction makes the

difference between performers and the rest of companies.

Collecting information from every point of contact with the consumer is a critical process. Only in this way

companies can identify the internal activities with added-value for the customer and the "why's" of the customer

experience.

To improve customer relationships, after analysing the feedback from customers, the generation and selection of

solutions comes naturally. The implementation of a pilot project is the relevance test of solutions designed to

improve customer satisfaction.

The company must provide what it promises; otherwise, especially now, in the digital age, the client 'kicks out'

the CEO, lowers company in rankings and decreases its market value.

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About Constantin Măgdălina

Constantin Magdalina has a 8 years working experience, while he performed in multinationals both in Romania and abroad. Constantin owns a Master in

Marketing and Business Communication at the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest. He is certified Lean Six Sigma and ITIL which provide him a good

understanding of processes and transformations within organizations. The Chartered Institute of Marketing and Hubspot certifications furthered on complemented

his expertise and knowledge in business. In those over 4 years working activity at EY he initiated and conducted studies which analyzed different aspects related

to the business environment in Romania such as the economic growth predictions of companies in 2013-2016, knowledge management, the buying experience

in the age of digital consumers, social media 2013-2015, the utilization of mobile devices in Romania. He is the author of numerous articles on topics related to

innovation, the efficiency of business processes, social media, the consumers’ buying experience in the age of digital, trends and emergent technologies. He is

invited as speaker at numerous events and business conferences.