Companies spend millions of dollars every year to retain customers. However, only a few understand the key logical and emotional drivers of customer loss or measure the impact of their efforts beyond basic Voice-of-the-Customer statistical analysis or “rescue program” calculations. 

But many research and insights efforts fail to uncover is the business case for improving the customer experience, customer service or products.  What the C-Suite really needs to know is:

• What financial opportunity is being lost?  (In dollars, not statistics)
• Where is the opportunity being lost?
• Why it is being lost?  And how to stop the leakage?
• What amount of the leakage can be recovered? 
• How much to invest in its recovery?

Our customer journey research efforts with global brands covers four key aspects of the “Path to Purchase”:

1. Marketing / Prospect Leakage – Turning unaware prospects into buyers and minimizing the “leakage” of prospects during the “Awareness-to-Initial Purchase” stage
2. Sales / Revenue Leakage – Ensuring that customers can spend the full amount of their purchase intention during the sales & renewal journey, and that “Revenue leakage” throughout the customer lifecycle is minimized
3. Customer Retention / Customer Leakage – Ensuring that customers receive the positive experience that will keep them coming back year after year and renewing their purchases with the company and brand. 

B2B Example

A global B2B manufacturer serving some of the largest personal care brands in the world commissioned research to understand the customer journey and where they could improve their “customer experience” to uncover and capture business opportunities in a relatively slow-growth market. 

After reviewing the insights from interviews nearly all their major customers and surveying all customers in their database as well as hundreds of non-customer decision makers, a robust insights report was prepared for Senior Leadership.  The report covered the relative importance of 15 key purchasing factors, analysis of derived importance of those factors, how customers perceived their company vis-à-vis other comparable suppliers and prioritized improvement opportunities. 

But the only chart the C-Suite wanted to discuss was the one with the chart below:

They wanted to capture the 90% lost growth opportunity from 4 key areas and “pulled out their checkbook” to make investments in the mobilization and implementation of growth generating efforts. 

In one meeting the conversation turned from Insights into Opportunities, and the hero of the meeting was the Insights Leader who had created the “Treasure Map to Value” from customer insights. 

Call 1-800-549-7170 or send an email to nitin@goldresearchinc.com  for a free consultation on this topic.

Gold Research is an award-winning Customer Journey Management firm with extensive experience in B2C and B2B journey mapping, path-to-purchase research with a special focus in deploying “real-time” and behavioral/neuroscience research formats to gather in-the-moment customer insights.