Knowledge and trust are the essence of most customer-vendor relationships. If you don't have them, you don't have a [commercial] relationship.
Strengthening Customer/Client
Relationships
For most organizations today, their vision of excellence includes some aspects of the customer or client relationship. Because it is hard to get into an industry's top-performing group without having many satisfied customers, strengthening customer relationships is a top priority for both leaders and those aspiring to leadership (i.e., excellence) status. Our approach in this critical performance area is based on:
« Building knowledge about customers
« Developing insights about their behavior
« Matching relationship strategy to critical customer attributes.
The success metric here is often market share growth because, if you truly are the best or among the best, then your share of customers or clients will confirm it.
Customers Define "Excellence"
Excellence in customer relationships is defined in practice not by the businesses that serve them but by the customers themselves. Your relationship excellence definition must be very close to that of your customers if you want to succeed. The most effective approach is to determine how your customers define relationship excellence and then use that as your definition.
There is no one-size-fits-all with customers. You will nearly always have to tailor your relationship excellence definition for each customer group, and often even for each of your very largest customers.
What is a "Relationship"?
As a customer, I really don't want to have a "relationship", as it is commonly understood, with any of my vendors. What I do want is for them to take the time to know enough about my and my situation to be able to supply me reliably with what I need. And, I want to be able to trust that they will put my needs ahead of their own wherever possible. Knowledge and trust define a relationship.
For more about relationship strategy ... è
Examples
Here are a few examples of how we might be able to help you strengthen your customer or client relationships:
¥ Using Profitability Analysis to Develop Relationship Strategy
¥ Improving Marketing Program Effectiveness
¥ Improving Customer/Client Satisfaction
¥ Using a Relationship Strategy to Enhance Competitive Differentiation