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Customer Connect - Insight Sherpas.pdf
- 1. C R EA T I N G A C U S T O M E R C L O S E N E S S P R O G R A M M E T H A T D R I V E S C H A N G E Customer Connect
- 2. You rely onyour customers, but they don’t necessarily rely on you You probably live and breathe your brand. You may well spend eight hours or more a day thinking about it. But your customers don’t. To connect with them effectively, it’s critical to understand the broader context of their lives People have a lot on their plates right now. Heading into a recession, amid a cost-of-living crisis, they’re busy battling to adapt Needs are changing and sacrifices are being made to balance the household books. If consumers decide to give up your brand, you might feel it more than they do Building genuine empathy with your customers and staying relevant to their needs has never been so important for brand survival
- 3. Closeness is aboutputting the customer in the room, to drive better decision making, and ultimately growth 87% of overperforming businesses take the voice of the customer into account in every business decision (compared to only 22% of underperforming businesses)* * Driving Customer Centric Growth – Insights (ESOMAR) Increasingly, it’s not enough just to land insight through reports and presentations. Colleagues need to experience it. When customer truths are absorbed in this way, they tend to stay front of mind and translate into action An effective customer closeness programme can help to: - Embed a culture of customer-centricity throughout the organisation - Ensure decision making is informed by insight - Drive audience and revenue growth
- 4. We’ve found thatthree things are necessary to avoid customer closeness being put in the ‘nice to do’ column. Your programme needs to… And yet customer closeness activities can be difficult to justify when budgets are under pressure 1 2 3 CHANGE MINDS DRIVE ACTION MAXIMISE ROI At every stage stakeholders need to believe that Customer Closeness is both necessary and value for money
- 5. Customer Connect isour approach to helping you build a lean and impactful customer closeness programme
- 6. CHANGING MINDS meansusing creative techniques to bring customer truths to life WE START WITH CUSTOMER TRUTHS Our programmes help you to fully leverage your existing insight and align everyone to the organization’s customer goals, using research and data as our starting point WE WORK WITH YOU TO BUILD A COMMUNICATIONS PLAN To challenge beliefs, you need to think like a marketeer: understand your audience, identify the best ways to reach them, and focus single-mindedly on your key messages WE GO BIG ON HUMAN STORIES To drive reappraisal, we connect stakeholders with emotive, human stories linked with live business issues. Charities have been getting this right for decades. C A S E S T U D Y Our client wanted to understand their ageing customer base. We conducted thorough research, mined purchasing data, arranged face time with customers and made clear, strong recommendations. They seemed to understand the messages and yet action was oddly lacking. In a follow up workshop, we asked stakeholders to wear glasses that simulate eye problems and gloves that simulate arthritis while they chose, purchased and ate their lunch. That single hour was what was needed to disrupt their accepted ways of thinking by allowing them to experience what their customers experience every day. We could then use the data we already had to size the market and together devise actions to implement.
- 7. C A SE S T U D Y A grocery retailer was struggling to move forward on a number of crucial business issues. The issues were complex, and a wealth of existing customer research wasn’t providing the confidence for decision makers to act. Together with the insight team we structured a programme around the 4 key business issues. For each one we assigned a senior stakeholder sponsor, invited a cross-functional working group (fusing skills and info from across the organisation), and held a series of sessions combining an engaging closeness activity with an action generation workshop. At the end of the final sessions we had together agreed a way forward, as well as a set of actions and names which would form the basis of an action log. Dates were agreed for intermittent follow up meetings, making it easier for the insight team to hold stakeholders to account and collect evidence of the impact of their customer closeness programme. DRIVING ACTION means building a programme that informs decision-making WE BELIEVE IN BEING A LITTLE BIT DISRUPTIVE Creative methodologies which take people out of their day job are important if closeness is to disrupt received assumptions and prompt stakeholders to think and act differently WE USE DATA TO PROVIDE THE CONFIDENCE TO ACT In our experience human stories build motivation, but it is data and insight which give stakeholders the permission to act, removing the ‘it’s just one customer’ barrier WE WORK WITH YOU TO TRANSLATE INSIGHT INTO ACTION At Insight Sherpas we’ve all previously been client-side insight leads, so we know how hard it can be to drive real change. That’s why we build senior stakeholder sponsorship, cross-functional working, and decision-making techniques into all our closeness programmes
- 8. Stakeholder promises C AS E S T U D Y Our client knew that inaccurate views of their customers were deeply entrenched throughout their organisation. They needed us to deliver closeness activity at many levels of seniority but within a modest budget. Insight Sherpas collaborated with the client team to develop a lean programme, designed to deliver impact as cost-efficiently as possible. The solution in a nutshell: 1) Online briefing sessions run by the Sherpas with key customer truths produced and presented by the internal insight team 2) Stakeholder self-service retail safaris supported by a Sherpa-designed toolkit 3) Sherpa run round-up workshops linking attendee experiences with customer truths and linking through to clear actions Customer closeness delivered at scale and within budget. MAXIMISING ROI means focusing on outcomes and cost efficiency WE’RE LEAN AND EFFICIENT We’re used to helping clients get the most out of limited budgets, using creativity to deliver maximum impact without breaking the bank WE EMBRACE COLLABORATION To drive efficiency and optimise return on investment, we typically partner closely with client teams, leveraging internal assets where appropriate WE’LL HELP YOU BUILD EVIDENCE OF IMPACT We’ll help you collect the evidence you need to show the rest of the business just how much positive change your programme is driving, and to demonstrate the impact on the bottom line
- 9. Because we wantto respect your budget. Whether you have 5K or 150K to play with, we want to focus that spend where it will have the biggest impact Because the starting point will depend on how engaged, motivated & open your stakeholders are. What barriers exist and how disruptive do you feel you can be? Because it will also depend on how much clarity you have regarding those key messages. Are your customer truths already pinned down or will we need to get insight mining? Because we need to factor in how much time your team can devote to the programme. Are you able to help host, moderate, prepare materials, crunch research & insight or do you need us to tackle that while you concentrate on the day job? Our customer closeness solutions are always bespoke, never off the peg
- 10. Creative methodologies tomeet your needs THROUGH THE KEYHOLE What better way to understand the role your brand plays (or doesn’t play) in people’s lives than by having a nosey in their kitchen cupboards, wardrobes, bathrooms… VAN RUMMAGE Trade customers showed stakeholders inside the back of their van and chatted about shopping habits and preferences over bacon sandwiches. QUESTION TIME We turned the tables and had a group of customers put challenging questions to a panel of senior stakeholders. WAKE UP WITH A CUSTOMER Every morning for a month staff opened their inboxes to find a one-minute film clip of a customer which they had been told (by the CEO) to watch before they started their day. CUSTOMER POINTS Employees were awarded points each time they completed a customer closeness activity and points targets were included in their annual objectives. SPEED DATING We recruited target segment customers to match the number of stakeholders for an event where they each had 5 minutes to get to know each other before moving onto their next date. RETAIL SAFARI From shopping together online at head office to ordering fast food, there’s no better way to find out how your customers really do it. COOK-ALONG We hired a cooking school facility and recruited customers to cook a typical family meal at their station. Stakeholders rotated around the stations,chatting informally to customers as they cooked.. IT TAKES TWO We put customers and stakeholders into pairs and set tasks for them to complete together.Organising a holiday on a set budget, family meal planning for the week ahead… DRAGON’S DEN A co-creationsession where the project team presented a series of ideas to customers who had to decide on whether to ‘invest’. The customers then helped the team fine tune their ideas. TURN UP OR TUNE IN Wannabe attendees were dotted around the country, so we broadcast focus groups to a head office audience on a giant screen and allowed others to dial in remotely (150+ in total). 8 OUT OF 10 CATS We set up an online quiz for employees at all levels to complete. Questionswere set and answers given by customers in brief video clips.
- 11. We’d love tohear from you hello@insightsherpas.com www.insightsherpas.com Done right, closeness is not fluffy, it’s not just a chance to have fun. It should be challenging and thought provoking for stakeholders. It should drive better decisions at all levels of an organisation and ultimately, promote growth. Businesses who do it well will have a clear commercial advantage over those who don’t.