The document discusses three key ways for companies to build strong customer relationships: 1) Understanding customer needs through voice of the customer research. This involves identifying must-have, primary, and untold needs. 2) Collecting customer information from all touchpoints to measure how well processes meet expectations. 3) Analyzing customer feedback through tools like 5 Whys to identify root causes of dissatisfaction and generate solutions through techniques like brainstorming and pilot projects. Implementing these practices helps transform companies into being customer-centric.

1. 1
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.

2. 2
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

3. 3
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.
* * *
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.