Over the past decade, Customer Centricity is being increasingly looked upon as an imperative for enhancing an organisation’s levels of process maturity and performance excellence. Organisations the world over have been embarking on initiatives aimed at strengthening it’s Customer-related processes – Customer database management, sales force automation, distribution, dealer management, enterprise account management and after sales support, to name a few.
Customer Driven Excellence means much more than reducing defects and errors, complying with specifications, and reducing complaints: Organisations which are “Customer Driven” differentiate product and service offerings, and customize offerings with rapid response. Customer Driven Excellence is thus a strategic concept and is directed to Customer retention, loyalty, market share gain and growth in line with changing and emerging market requirements. One way is to look at the transformation of an organisation in this journey in three distinct stages as explained in the exhibit.
The Customer Driven Excellence (CDE) practice at TQMS endeavours to assist Group companies in their journey to becoming Customer-driven – and living the core value of the Tata Business Excellence Model.
Methodology:
The CDE practice has developed approaches to engage with the organisation. These approaches will differ depending on the size, maturity and business needs of the organisation. The practice classifies its engagements as follows:
|
Area of Expertise |
Objective |
How we do it |
|
Awareness |
To develop conceptual understanding on methods, tools and techniques related to and applied in Customer and sales management processes. |
Customized in-house workshops, integrating learning through case studies or recently concluded consulting assignments. |
|
Customer Centricity |
To assess and enhance current levels of Customer centricity in the organisation. |
Diagnostic study to identify the readiness of the organisation’s work systems and culture to respond to Customers’ needs.
§ Conduct training modules for Customer facing and non-Customer facing employees.
§ Develop and deploy mechanisms to create an emotionally engaged workforce and improve the Customer-centric culture of the organisation. |
|
Customer Segmentation |
To define / redefine Customer segments and develop appropriate targeting strategy in line with organisation’s short and long term business plans. |
§ Study market dynamics and identify the bases for slicing the market.
§ Identify factors affecting Customer behaviour in selected markets.
§ Identify targeted Customer segments and develop targeting strategies.
§ Establish measurement systems to track progress on the targeting strategies. |
|
Understanding your Customer |
To develop Customer insights for the organisation and map them with the organisation’s operational capabilities and strengths. |
§ Map preferences and ascertain key value drivers for buying behaviour and retention of the identified Customer groups.
§ Conduct extensive Voice of Customer studies, observations of Customer purchases, and interactions with Customers to identify Customer needs and derive opportunities for the organisation to respond to these needs.
§ Formulate and recommend an appropriate improvement plan. |
|
Delivering superior Customer experience |
To design a superior Customer experience around various stages of Customer touch points, which is consistent, reduces rework and improves cost of servicing Customers. |
Designing and facilitating the implementation of processes and behaviour to engage with Customers, which deliver a superior and cost effective Customer experience:
§ Design the Customer experience lifecycle.
§ Translate the Customer experience into performance metrics.
§ Institutionalize the Customer experience design on the field.
§ Build organisational capability to scale up the methodology and deploy it across the organisation.
§ Establish a measurement system to check for,and enhance effectiveness.
*For some organisations in the B2B space, the expertise is deployed as Total Partner Experience which involves channel partners viz. franchisees, distributors, dealers etc. |
|
Key Account Management |
To target “Share of Wallet” of key accounts (Customers) by enhancing Customer experience and by deploying focused Customer engagement strategies |
Identifying and finalizing key Customers; detailed profiling of key accounts; and identifying related metrics:
§ Understand present and future business.
§ Identify plan to enhance the relationship.
§ Develop account plan to manage current and potential opportunities. |