7.2: Project—Creating Customer Portfolios The company to use is DTV In this assignment, you will create two customer portfolios for your own organization or for one you have enough information about in order to make sensible predictions relating to custom

Theme 2: Designing the Customer Portfolio

After your hard work identifying the cultural changes of your organization and the impact of a customer-centered focus upon internal processes, you are ready to dig deeper and to design a couple of customer portfolios. These portfolios are an important aspect of the final portfolio you will submit to your boss and higher leadership. They need to be able to see how an identified customer relationship could be followed across time, encouraged by a learning relationship based on trust and cultivated for years to come.

You recall working on identifying customers in your organization whose long-term value could begin to be calculated and potential interactions predicted. You will review those documents and use the data to help you create customer portfolios. Select two customers to focus upon, ones for whom you believe you could create a portfolio as each entered your organization's touch points of service.

Identify Channels of Customer Entry

First, you will identify different customer entry channels. For example, one customer enters through the website after answering a short quiz about choosing one of your products. Identify the point at which this customer entered name and contact information, the database that held this information and all the employee groups that had access to it. You then identify all of your organization's internal groups that would contribute to the purchase of the item and would interact with the customer through the website. Based upon your analysis, some questions will surface:

· At what points would the customer be encouraged to purchase other items or services before leaving the website?

· What would happen if the customer had a problem? Which channels would respond?

· Would the customer information be available to those people?

· What could be sold to the customer once the problem was solved?

· How could that message be considered by the customer to be caring rather than sales-oriented only?

· How could trust be reinforced at this point of service?

· What would happen after the purchase?

· How often would your organization approach this customer? With what new offers?

You decide that you could approach this customer once every three months with a new suggestion for a purchase. This would remind the customer that he is a valued customer without your company becoming a nuisance. Additionally, you decide to include a trust-builder at a specific point in the process, where handy and hard-to-find product-related hints will be provided.

Next, you propose to follow this customer for the next 10 years, offering a trust-building sales proposition related to life events that would most likely occur. For example, for a customer who could soon be an “empty-nester,” your organization could offer hints for obtaining non-profit donation tax benefits as he prepared to downsize his home. Then, at the same time, you could offer one of the services your organization provided for this customer category.

Each opportunity you create for customers to purchase will also be attached to an opportunity to learn from the customer. You recall that customers are eager to offer their insights; and the more opportunities you offer, the more your organization could learn from them. You identify the databases where the information is stored and how it is attached to the initial contact with the customer. You use this data-gathering process to gradually build a picture of a sample customer so that your leaders could watch the learning process occur. At the conclusion of the portfolio, your customer seems to come to life!

Once you complete two other customer portfolios, you believe you have a convincing presentation for the customer-centered approach. You have shaped real customers for your leaders and employees to “see.” You plan to use this to inspire and motivate your leaders and fellow employees, and format a guide for future use.

Customer Portfolio Formation Guide

· Identify current customers, gathering as many facts as possible.

· Trace all touch points within the organization, from the first channel of purchase to the last.

· Design scenarios for building trust-based learning relationships.

· Bear in mind the impact of social media sites as opportunities to inform your customers as well as to learn about their upcoming life events.

· Create future purchase opportunities paired with stated benefits to the customer.

· Identify supporting processes that build trust with your internal processes and employees.

· Identify opportunities for customer feedback that enhance the customer relationship.

· Predict future opportunities for retaining customers, following life events and predicting how often you would approach them in order to build but not endanger the relationship.