It's great if what your customers like exactly matches what you and your team have on offer.
But life is often more complicated. Different customers have different preferences, and you and your team have developed some skills, services or products that your market just doesn't seem ready for. They may even express a preference for a product that you want to move away from.
And it's just as complicated if your customers are internal rather than external.(See "Delivering what customers want" for an overview of what customers value.)
This exercise helps you strike the right balance between what you offer and what your customers want.
You will need information from your customers about what they want from you. Which of your products or services they value highly, what they expect and what improvements they would like to see.
You can download a copy of this customer-provider matrix here.
The exercise
Taking each key result area in turn:
- Make a list of your major customers.
- Think carefully about what you know about what they value and improvements they would like.
- If you have a lot of customers with different "wants", you can group like-minded customers together and complete a separate sheet for each group. If appropriate, you should have sheets for important internal, as well as external, customers.
- Write these customer preferences in Box 2 if you want to start or continue meeting that need, or Box 3 if you would prefer to stop / not start.
- Next, write in Box 1 any products or services you want to provide even though customers have expressed no interest in them. This box normally has products or services that you think customers will come to want in the future, or activities that you and your team are passionate about even if nobody wants them. Items in this box are often motivators internally for the team.
- Unfortunately, in virtually every team I have done this exercise with, there are also activities in Box 4. Services that you provide but you're not happy about - and nor are your customers. Maybe your technology or skills are out of date but your customers are contracted to deal with you. Maybe you want to upskill but don't have the resources at the moment. These are often legacy services that might be doing your reputation damage.
- When you have all the important information on customer matrix sheets, review the whole lot and pull them together.
- What screams out at you in Box 2? This is the win-win box where your customers want what you want. Summarise it. These are the major areas to go forward to your clarifying your objectives session.
- Next, look at Box 3. Your customers value these products. Can you find a way of making these more attractive to your team? Can you shift your customers onto a related product that you do want to provide?
- Next, look at Box 1. How can you make these products or services more attractive to your customers? Would better marketing help? If not, are you sure you can justify the time you are spending in that area? Do you need to cut anything?
- Finally Box 4. How can you get out of these areas, because they are probably doing your reputation no good at all. Delete or modify these products / services as quickly as you can.
- Conclude by pulling this exercise together into a prioritised list of what you want to offer your customers or develop for the future.