There are 4 stages in conducting a Customer Value Survey:

1. Management workshop(s) to define the scope of the project and identify:

• A cross functional team to manage and carry out the project
• Introduces the customer value framework to the team if necessary
• Assesses the internal perspective of customer profile

2. Survey Design:

• Set questions incorporating management workshop output
• Who to survey
• How to survey? Web, telephone or face-to-face

3. Survey and analysis, where you:

• Collate customer perspectives
• Identify the key attributes in the customers’ eyes
• Determine your relative strengths and weaknesses versus your competitors
• Analyse market segments

4. Action Workshop(s), where you: * Compare internal & external perspectives * Link the results to company strategy * Formulatie an action plan for change.

1. Market Segmentation - what markets do we compete in and how are they segmented?
2. Definition of the customer - who influences the buying decision and who makes the purchase decision?
3. Definition of the key buying factors - what are the key purchase criteria of customers?

In this context we are looking to determine the scope of the market(s) and also the highest level of aggregation.

1. Do we have markedly different products and services?
2. Are the customers different?
3. Are the competitors different?
4. Do customers have different purchase criteria?
5. Does the purchase / bid have a different timescale or process?

Generally speaking, if the competitors have little overlap and the purchase criteria are different then there are multiple markets and the market segments cannot easily be combined in an analysis.

To ensure that we can aggregate and/or compare worksheets effectively we create an internal list of all the competitors we think respondents will identify.

1. Naming competitors ensures we have a consistent market definition.
2. For the internal perspective we rate all relevant competitors for that segment.
3. When assessing the external CVA perspective, we don’t put them on the sheet for customer interviews – we want to know who they actively consider when buying.
4. If the respondent names a competitor that is not on the list it is automatically added when the worksheet is complete

Buying criteria, (otherwise known as worksheet attributes) are the attributes on which respondents score the competitors performance. Buying criteria should:

1. Capture all non-price elements of the purchase decision from the customers perspective.
2. Not be too detailed:
3. Not be too broad – you need to be able to derive action items.The more attributes there are the lower the average importance of each and therefore its influence. We want participants to think about their answer, too much detail and they will “switch off”.
4. Not to be ambiguous – you, customers and interviewers must know what they mean.
5. Be able to link back to to internal processes.

When considering the attributes that make up the customers buying criteria we split them into 3 categories:

• Product attributes – which is what they buy,
• Service Attributes which are the associated services around that in terms of pre-sales & post sales activities, delivery & support,
• and image attributes which are down to the perception of the company.

The categories can be arbitrary, but we find are a good way of helping focus on what is important and how they might relate back to internal processes. Generally we find that in commodity markets where there is little to differentiate the product, service attributes in particular become more important to the customer. The attributes are defined in workshops such as this, by conducting test interviews, or a mixture.

In this context segmentation is looking at types of respondent within a market. It is always better to pre-define Segmentation criteria you don’t use than to try and add them after the survey. You should consider the following possible segmentations:

1. Internal view vs External view. It is important that we separate these!
2. Region: You should define at a relatively low level (i.e. choose countries or regions rather than Europe), and aggregate up where necessary.
3. Respondents function? This can be useful if you are getting more than one interview from a company or if you are conducting several interviews for the Internal view.
4. Customer type, size, etc.?
5. Existing customer vs prospects.
6. Other?