Customer Strategy

Customer Interviews / Customer Needs Analysis

Understanding customer needs is a basic element of any customer strategy. Yet surprisingly few companies have a systematic program for capturing customer requirements and productizing them. And those that do face many difficulties in effectively executing such a program:

• Feature/attribute trade-offs; price trade-off – Often customers are asked to rate the attractiveness of product features in isolation. Such an approach does not take into account the inevitable trade-offs necessary between different features given technological and resource limits. Additionally, many times customer needs analysis fails to identify the product features that customers are actually willing to pay for, that is, the price/feature trade-off. Using its experience, and sophisticated methods such as conjoint analysis, EbTide can sidestep such pitfalls in conducting customer needs studies.
• Eliciting open, honest feedback – As an independent research firm, EbTide can often elicit more honest responses from customers in comparing our clients’ services and products with those of competitors.
• Experience in setting up interviews with senior management/decision makers – Today’s executives face more demands on their time than ever. When it’s necessary to understand the views of senior decision makers, experience in setting up and conducting such interviews is vital, both to conduct a successful research project, and also to protect a companies reputation with current or potential customers. EbTide brings a wealth of such experience to the table.

Customer Loyalty Strategy / Retention Marketing

Pareto’s Law, also known as the 80/20 rule, states that 80% of results are derived from 20% of causal factors. Broadly applicable to many industries, the 80/20 rule implies that 80% of revenues and profits are typically generated by 20% of customers. The above insight is the foundation of any customer loyalty strategy. In devising a customer loyalty strategy for our clients, EbTide will clearly answer the following questions:

• Who are your best customers?
• What are they worth to you? (Customer Lifetime Value)
• How do you retain your most valuable customers?
• What is the impact on profitability?
• How do you manage services and pricing so as not to attract/retain unprofitable customers?
• Who are your average customers?
• How do you cross-sell them more products and services? How do you transform them into highly profitable customers?

Core Capabilities