Customer Preferences

As customers we all have 'preferences', but more often than not these remain hidden because we simply haven't been asked to think about how we would prefer to do business.

Some common and more obvious preferences include:

• How often we want to be contacted.
• Who we want to contact us.
• How we want to be contacted.
• What method of payment we prefer.
• How often we'd like to pay.
• Timing for billing and payment.
• Operational information supplied and interval.

Other less obvious preferences can also help achieve increased customer satisfaction, provide a differentiated service or build exit obstacles for clients. A few examples that we have encountered can be found below:

• A utility company was able to read meters at intervals to suit key customers, saving costs and building trust with those customers who were previously irritated by their actions
• A print company greatly improved cash flow by asking customers when they preferred to pay and adjusted prices accordingly
• A Composite Design & Manufacturing company gained access to new contracts by providing drawings in imperial units as well as of metric, which was achieved at the press of a button on their CAD system.

Preferences are powerful, yet can often be easily identified and implemented. Imonic's approach to building in preferences involves the following:

For Key/high value accounts: determine preferences via surveys or customer focus groups. Determine importance to the customer, uniqueness in the marketplace and costs/practicalities of implementation. Build preferences into service plans or service level agreements to demonstrate the commitment (and tailored effort) you are making.

For Consumers/lower value business customers: segment these customers into recognisable groups. Identify the common preferences within each group. Identify the common preferences across groups. Determine costs and benefits to you. Implement the systems on a test group to prove out then gauge customer reaction, satisfaction and confirm costs. Launch to remainder of groups/customers. Enhance with a blaze of PR.

Imonic have developed various methodologies to extract, help analyse and implement customer preferences. Contact us for more details.