The Customer Relationship Auditing process has multiple benefits, the most important of which are allowing our clients to get closer to their customers and generating more revenue from them more cost effectively. Other benefits are:

1. Determine each customer's critical buying factors
2. Identify true customer needs vs. perceived needs
3. Create dialogue based on actual needs vs. perceived needs
4. Make customers aware you care about their business
5. Determine whether your competitive advantages are valid
6. Solicit customer suggestions of how to meet their desired level of performance (becoming customer driven)
7. Manage service level agreement based on a negotiated service contract through their needs and abilities
8. Determine where your customer equity is strongest and there to focus investments
9. Formalised strategic responses depending on how much value the customer adds to the company
10. Determine your strengths and weaknesses to start managing the effectively
11. Retain intellectual capital of account managers & sales personnel
12. Determine weak processes from the customer perspective
13. Help eliminate company silos and chinese walls
14. The relationship becomes an asset that can be leveraged for profit
15. Specific areas, account managers or types of businesses can be assessed depending on the criteria you select

1. Determine each customer's critical buying factors

Each customer has a unique set of Critical Buying Factors. By not giving them a range of fixed choices via structured questionnaires (as is the norm for most other research) they can express their individuality. Only by understanding what a customer’s unique Critical Buying Factors are can solutions be created around them. These unique solutions will set you apart from your competition.

2. Identify true customer needs vs. perceived needs

When companies first get a customer on their books a lot of effort is expended on determining what they want and processes are created to satisfy this. However needs change and if these need changes are not monitored and updated, you will be working around their perceived and not their real needs. If a competitor were to approach your customer and determine their true needs, they could be lured away because you are working on historical data.

3. Create dialogue based on actual needs vs. perceived needs

A unique report is generated for each customer interviewed. This allows account managers to go back to their customers with the report in hand and work out a solution that is beneficial to all. Remember, any competitor can duplicate a product, but if your customer expertise is based on what a customer has taught you about his needs, then your competitor would first have to secure the participation of the customer to duplicate this level of expertise.

4. Make customers aware you care about their business

Often long-time customers feel they have been taken for granted, as once they are on the books, the level of care usually drops off as other new customers receive all the focus and energy. This builds resentment and a willingness to talk to your competition. By conducting the interview, the customer realizes they are important to you and their business is appreciated. Also the structure of the questionnaire makes them realize their input is important and they could be helping change your companies processes to their advantage (and thus to yours as well). Remember, everyone resents being taken for granted and everyone wants to feel appreciated.

5. Determine whether your competitive advantages are valid

What is the use of having a competitive advantage your customers do not understand or that is not perceived to be important to your customers? This is a waste of marketing and can be detrimental to your company. We not only test the validity of your competitive advantage, but how well you are doing at it – it is important that you excel at your competitive advantages in your customer’s eyes!

6. Solicit customer suggestions of how to meet their desired level of performance (becoming customer driven)

Through our process your customer determines what their needs are from you. We then ask them how you can improve your services to better meet these needs. Your customers often come up with innovative and simple ways you can better your service to them. If you implement their suggestions, you get better buy-in from the customer as they are now a part of the process rather than standing on the side criticising.

7. Manage service level agreement based on a negotiated service contract through their needs and abilities

If your company does not have Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) this process is a large step forward in determining how you measure yourself against what your customers want. If you do have SLA’s, this give you the opportunity to revisit the SLA and together determine whether it needs to be updated or not.

8. Determine where your customer equity is strongest and there to focus investments

Customer Equity is becoming a way of determining a company’s worth. Part of our process is visiting customer equity, or where to invest in the company to ensure the best return on investment. For this, you want to invest in those areas you are poor at, not those areas you are good at. By investing in your poor areas will ensure your current customers stay with you and potentially attract similar customers.

9. Formalised strategic responses depending on how much value the customer adds to the company

We recommend you interview multiple individuals within a customer company, as the needs of the CEO are different to those of the Marketing Director or the Operations Managers. Each of these is a decision-maker or influencer, so their separate and different needs must be assessed and understood. Also what if one of them is a potential “terrorist”, or they think you are giving them a less than adequate service level? They will be badmouthing you within the company and have a lot of credibility with their peers, thus destroying your brand. By understanding each individual’s needs and how well you are doing, a strategic plan can be generated to overcome your weaknesses and ensure you meet their needs.

10. Determine your strengths and weaknesses to start managing the effectively

Every company has strengths and weaknesses. By understanding what your customer thinks are your strengths and weaknesses, you can now manage them by explaining why their perceptions of your weaknesses are invalid or by fixing them.

11. Retain intellectual capital of account managers & sales personnel

Your key account managers and sales reps are not poached by your competition for their good looks; they are poached because of their customer base. Also sales people try and keep their customers as far away from their company as possible as this gives them a bargaining tool. If a sales person leaves, you can give their replacement all the individual reports thus allowing them to go to the customers and determine what progress has been made regarding outstanding needs. This retains the intellectual capital and the account within your company and severs the relationship between your customer and the now-departed account manager.

12. Determine weak processes from the customer perspective

We give an overview of all your processes from the customer’s perspective. Weak processes exacerbate customer frustrations and lead to competitors getting a foot in the door. Processes rated below the Zone of Tolerance and worse than the competition need to be fixed to stop customer churn and defections to the competition. Remember it is four to ten times cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one.

13. Help eliminate company silos and chinese walls

Often Divisional Heads and Department Managers only see their part in the value chain and can have a warped perception of their company. Depending on their bargaining and political skills, they may get more than a fair portion of the budget or not spend it in a way that fixes customer needs. By having a bird’s eye view of the company from the customer’s perspective, the Chinese Walls that exist between departments can be seen for what they are, and more effective solutions developed.

14. The relationship becomes an asset that can be leveraged for profit

What is the use of a customer on your books if you only have 5% of their wallet share? By understanding their needs better, you can grow your percent of wallet share so the relationship, not the customer, becomes the asset. Besides it is much cheaper to grow revenue from an existing customer than it is to go out and get a new customer.

15. Specific areas, account managers or types of businesses can be assessed depending on the criteria you select

We create a data cube that can be sliced and diced in any way you want. We can segment your customers the way you segment your customers. We can also segment them by industry, by region, by account manager, by management level, by products they use, etc. Then by comparing each segment against others, similarities and differences are highlighted enabling you to gain insights you had never seen before about customers, allowing you to revisit your segmentation and helping give your customers a more streamlined service delivery.