Customer Research Basics Slideshare
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A quick overview about the merits of market/customer research and when to use it.
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Customer Research Basics Slideshare
- 1. Valuing Customers and their Value to Your Company
- 13. The Role of the Customer 01/25/11 Prospect Driven Internally Driven Customer/Industry Data Driven User Driven Heaviest use of customer input is prospect driven Weakest use of customer input is user driven
- 15. The Role of the Customer 01/25/11 Best Customers Partners Industry Segments Least likely to develop products/prioritize features for most profitable customers 0%
- 17. Questions? 01/25/11 Patrina Mack Managing Partner Vision & Execution 650 233 0256 www.visionandexecution.com
Editor's Notes
- Vision & Execution consultants excel at identifying the highest priority activities to create the greatest positive impact for your business. We ask the right questions that will get you focused on the right issues for focused results. We become value added team members by quickly establishing themselves as subject matter experts through the broad use of customer, industry and financial data. We bring vast practical and strategic skills and experience to bear on client issues for rapid, measurable results.
- Yet the companies who talked to their customers showed a rather attractive success rate. The techniques used by the companies who were successful -- as measured by increased market share and faster time to market -- include participating in sales calls, mining customer wants and needs from customer facing employees, focus group/qualitative research and competitive analysis. The techniques least likely to positively affect market share and time to market are: Executive Decision, Internal Idea, and Strategic Customer Requirements And who is testing new products? Paying customers?: Limited importance was placed on pilot programs, beta tests, product bug data, feature request button on web site Prospects?: Most emphasis placed on prospective customers through sales calls, prototype evaluations and feedback from customer facing staff What is notable from this research is how little validation of the product requirements is done by paying customers -- there is an extremely low usage rate of any sort of trial mechanism by the respondents.
- Earlier we noted that 28% of study participants were “more customer focused” than they were 18 months ago. Interestingly enough, participants are only marginally more likely to use traditional market research, especially focus groups today than they were 18 months ago. It’s hard to tap customers for break-through ideas if you don’t talk to them. When asked of the sources used today, which one of these methods had the most impact on product success, they responded: Participating in sales calls 60% Pilot programs 50% Cost/benefit analysis 43% Focus groups/qualitative research 38% Prototype evaluations 33%
- So which customer segments matter? Just about none. Over 80% of companies do not let a customer segment dictate product functionality and almost 70% do not develop segment specific products. Yet for the companies who achieved 50-100% revenue growth, over 60% developed segment-specific products. Nearly 85% used a customer segment to help prioritize feature development. Clearly customer segmentation positively affects top line revenue growth. Untapped areas for product line extensions are feature prioritization segment specific Strategic partners 8% 20% Reference customers 12% 17% Application horizontals 2% 9% Most profitable customers 6% 7% Channels 0% 0%
- While our research did not isolate investment decisions by platform vs. features, we can infer that there is some shift to this prioritization given the increased use of cost/benefit and other financial analysis. This indicates a renewed emphasis on managing costs of doing business and not just growing revenues to increase earnings.