July 2007 Newsletter

eZines: June 2007 > July 2007 > August 2007

Dear Clients,

I have just returned from a business trip to a cold and wet Sydney and by all accounts it appears the drought may be breaking! What does not seem to be easing though is the ‘experience’ of customs and security checks… it might be one of the very few areas that customers will accept being treated like cattle and still return to go through the same experience over and over again. I guess it comes down to needs must!

For those of you who know Tania Hawkes, after 8 years of fantastic work Tania has decided to move on to explore other opportunities. Tania has been a massive contributor to SRD Group over the years and we thank her and wish her well in her new endeavours. Never fear though, the hole that Tania leaves will be filled by our team of subject matter experts, all of whom are senior consultants with many years of experience in CRM and Customer Experience Management.

As promised, this month we have included the case study on a recent Customer Experience Management initiative that we carried out at Fuji Xerox New Zealand using the Two Birds with One Stone (pdf) strategic context.

This month's edition includes:

• Extracting Profitable Growth From An Existing Customer Base – Fuji Xerox New Zealand (SRD Group)
• Voice Of The Customer Research: Let Your Customers Do The Talking – Neil Davey
• Creating a Business Case for CRM – Gary Smith

We hope that you find this month’s content useful. Be sure to contact us if you would like to know more about focusing on performance improvement in Customer Experience and Customer Relationship Management.

Kind regards



Managing Director

---

Extracting Profitable Growth From An Existing Customer Base - SRD Group Case Study

Fuji Xerox NZ (FXNZ) wanted to boost its growth, profitably.

They believed that by improving the experience their customers had of them that they could get organic growth from their existing customer base. There was a general feeling in the marketing department that FXNZ was providing a pretty average experience for its customers, but this had not been properly quantified. Previous customer satisfaction surveys had shown there was room to improve, but it was not clear just what the areas for focus might be. Read more to see what Fuji Xerox did... (PDF)

---

Voice Of The Customer Research: Let Your Customers Do The Talking - By Neil Davey

The thoughts below caught our attention and resonated well with what we espouse to our customers hence we thought it a worthwhile read.

… “If you go out to your customer base and ask them what is right and wrong with the company, you are asking them to commit time and effort. If you then do nothing about that, and you don’t make your service better on the strength of those recommendations, then those customers are going to feel less inclined to stay with you.

There are firms that merely talk the talk. But those that walk the walk know that it is the customer that should be doing the talking." Read more here...

---

Creating a Business Case for CRM - Gary Smith

There are a few ways to do this but this is simple and makes sense.

A compelling business case for CRM can be a catalyst for getting the project mobilised and building and maintaining stakeholder support. Read the full article here...

---

The Last Word

Shaw and Ivens, in their first book ‘Building Great Customer Experiences’, said that “71% of senior business leaders say that the Customer Experience is the next competitive battleground.” … their latest research however now says that “this figure has now increased to 95%”!