September 6, 2010

Five (More) HUGE. HUGE. Things Not Taught in Business Schools

Five more subjects that should get focus in business schools but rarely get the attention they deserve:
1. Customer Learning
2. Customer ‘Secrets’
3. Value-Based Holistic Offers (VBHO)
4. Serving Customers Model
5. Vary the Treatment Principle

Teaching Points:
> Customer Learning (CL) is NOT Market Research. CL is a continuous process of learning as much as you can about the customers you have chosen to SERVE. It is a core competency that never gets outsourced. It gets done by all employees and is the force behind Customerizing your organization.
> A Customer Secret is an innermost deep desire that your customer has, or it can be a trait or characteristic of the person that no one else knows. People find difficulty in sharing their secrets and do so only with people and organizations they have developed a deep relationship with and trust. Secrets power the BE DiFFERENT Offer Creation process. They fuel the ability to personalize VALUE for the individual and enable organizations to get away from looking at the ‘average’ customer.
> A VBHO is a package of VALUE not a product or service. VBHO’s reflect the broad Holistic needs, wants and desires of a person as opposed to a narrow range of features-based needs. VBHO are more expressive of EXPERIENCES and not material goods. They are premium priced not discounted as the Bundling world persists in doing.
> The Serving Customers Model puts the customer in the control position of determining what they want their service experience to look like. It is a fundamental shift from ‘Customer Service’ in which organizations decide the level and ingredients of how customers are served. Customer Service has the company in control. Costs of supplying service are high priority determinants of what the service experience looks like.
> The Vary the Treatment Principle is played out by recognizing that no two people are equal and that if you want to create Dazzling Moments for an individual you need to vary how you treat them. Consistent treatment of everyone will result in variable levels of customer satisfaction. Variable levels of treatment will result in consistently high levels of customer satisfaction. The prime criteria, therefore, in designing a Serve-the-Customer Strategy needs to be the capability to create a Vary the Treatment relationship with each customer you choose to SERVE.

Cheers, Roy

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Related Blog Articles
1st Five things Business Schools Don’t Teach
Customer Learning
Serving Customer Model
Customer Service or Serving Customers?
Customer Secrets
Holistic Offers
Bundles are NOT Holistic Offers

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Posted 9.6.10 at 08:00 pm by Roy Osing | Read Comments (0) | Leave a Comment