Customer Journey Get, Keep and Grow!

Oct 21^st 2014

This week, our focus has been on customer relationships – how we get, keep and grow our business. As we have progressed with our Canvas over the last few weeks, we have identified 3 primary customer segments for our project; SMEs involved in the B2C space, loyal customers of SMEs, and government agencies/investors and media bodies. With this in mind, we decided to outline the ‘get, keep and grow’ aspects of each segment. As our channels are still slightly complex in that our service and product would be delivered through different channels depending on the segment and stage of the service, we felt this would be the simplest way to approach the task. One thing that has certainly become evident from our conversations with SMEs is that they are a close-knit community, and often lean on one another for support, either through personal connections or business groups set up specifically to facilitate a community for small businesses. Many also seek outside support or advice from professional consultants early in their life cycle, so it has become evident that word of mouth will play a huge role for us.

Most SMEs have also highlighted the lack of resources that they have to dedicate towards such a service, so it’s clear that we need to look at a low-cost model that requires very little additional workload for the business, or even isolate the selling of trend reports to third parties as the revenue stream. We are considering the freemium model at this stage as well, with a basic report available as part of the free service, but offering paid tailored packages for those looking for more in-depth reports and more hands-on consultancy.

 

  

For customers, we have highlighted the need for the rewards/offers to them to be high quality, and of real value, as well as ensuring that they feel that their data is secure, and that the app is not obtrusive. For third parties, trend reports are often vital for them to make informed business or investment decisions, for them to gain market insights and draw up accurate forecasts, so there must be a quality analysis done and high-quality reports drawn up. The reports must be released regularly, to keep firms interested, as they will want to keep abreast of current trends.

We are still finding it quite tricky to secure interviews with SMEs – one of the main reasons behind this that we have encountered is a sheer lack of time on SME owners’ part. As we have mentioned on numerous occasions, they tend to be quite hands on, and resources tend to be stretched, so this has been a challenge. We will continue to use the list that Aisling has drawn up, and as I am a member and active participant in the Irish Biz Party Group (a forum for Irish entrepreneurs and small businesses), I have posted there to ask if any members would be willing to be interviewed to help us out. 

Aside from this, the general consensus in our group has been that perhaps we aren't casting the net widely enough, and that maybe our focus is too narrow by being just on SMEs themselves and customers. Over the coming weeks, we will be looking to interview others that work closely with SMEs that may be able to offer valuable insights and help us better our knowledge of our customer segments using an indirect approach, such as business consultants, technology experts etc. As Peter Drucker put it, “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself”!