Strengthening the customer relationship

Business needs

• How strong is the relationship with the customer and what is the risk of churn?
• What are the drivers of the customer relationship?
• How do we perform on these drivers?
• What are the leverages and improvement areas?
• Are we doing better or worse than competition?

b²sense approach

• We interviewed nearly 2,000 retailers in 5 European markets, representing over 70% of the global revenue, making sure that we have a sufficient sample by country, region, business type and customer segment so that we can draw reliable conclusions for each.
• Interviews were conducted by phone from an international call center using native speakers in order to guarantee a high response rate, which is a guarantee for representing this population well .
• Bearing in mind the difficulty getting hold of busy retailers, we suggested measuring into one single survey the strength of the relationship and their performance in terms of touch points and processes.
• Whilst the focus in the survey lie on the above metrics, we suggested to also include questions on image/reputation and pricing, since they are equally important drivers next to product and service quality.
• Next to using the usual (shorter-term) metrics such as satisfaction and Net Promoter Score, we applied b²sense’s multi-dimensional Commitment model integrating value experience, recommendation, loyalty and deal seeking to measure the longer-term strength of the relationship and our Inertia model to identify the customers’ inertia or moveability.
• Bearing in mind the impact that problem experience and (non-)resolution have on the relationship and promotership, we suggested including a full scale analysis of the problems encountered, the extent to which customers got in touch with the brand to resolve them and the extent to which the brand was able to resolve the issues to the customers’ satisfaction.

Outcome

• The survey clearly points out which country performs well and can set an example for the others and which country fails, either in terms of product- or service quality, pricing or image.
• A list of detailed high-priority improvement areas was drawn for each country, so that global management could identify the key areas in which a multi-country investment is required.
• Insight reports were prepared for global management and each country. After presenting the results to each, local teams could start developing their action plan.