Capturing customer value
Insight gap: case studies
Creating attractive propositions
A UK provider of retail financial services
Taking new propositions to market
PA set up and managed a pilot activity to test and research a new channel model and new propositions to the mid-market customer base of this provider of retail financial services. During the pilot period, PA showed that it was possible to double the sales call rate, and to increase the average size of business closed per call.
A water management company
Benchmarking performance
A water company that services 3.3 million properties in the North West of England had outsourced many customer management activities. The customer services director wanted to assess the performance of the outsourcing provider in delivering these services, in terms of price and quality measures. PA employed its flexible and modular benchmarking methodology that is designed to generate results. Our four-stage process produced a short-list of validated improvement opportunities with a potential impact of £5.5 million on the bottom line. The client gained valuable performance-related evidence that highlighted areas of strength as well as areas with scope to reduce the ‘cost to serve’. A number of barriers to improvement were highlighted such as existing company policies, and regulatory issues that could be challenged.
A major city transport organisation
Establishing common customer service standards
In the long term a 'customer service strategy' for a major city transport organisation may include a number of types of customer interaction and information handling. However, the immediate focus of our client was to bring together customer complaints receipt and handling across the individual transport modes - including Underground, Surface Transport and Streets Management. A customer service working group had been established to address this issue in a relatively short time. PA facilitated a strategic workshop to arrive at a common set of customer service standards across these modes covering the level of service provided and the principles behind the customer experience. PA worked with the organisation to define the customer; to develop the specific principles to guide the design and delivery of the customer experience; to agree the aim and role of the customer service contact centre; and to compile a set of consistent metrics and benchmarks to which the customer service centre would work.
A large US energy company
Gaining an understanding of market potential
Large commercial customers are widely recognised as important customers for energy-related products and services. However, there is uncertainty about the extent to which these customers may buy energy products and services beyond ‘commodity’ energy. To help our client gain a comprehensive understanding of the market potential for energy products and services in this market sector PA produced a comprehensive summary of this sector that included market size, customer characteristics, energy usage, market awareness, energy choices, business concerns, preferences and switching potential. PA developed the summary by combining the results from existing quantitative and qualitative market assessments that PA was conducting with results of prior market analysis studies conducted for this sector. The client gained a comprehensive understanding of the energy-related needs and preferences, switching potential, and size of the market for energy services for the large commercial customer market sector.
An industrial organisation
Taking a new service to market
PA’s market analytics experts worked with an industrial client to provide assistance in developing and taking a new residential energy management service to market. The market analysis tasks included qualitative research to define the product concept, analysis to determine the optimal set of features, and a market assessment to determine potential demand for the service. PA conducted a series of focus group discussions with specific segments of the consumer market. These were designed to identify differences in key service features and perceived value by different customer segments, as well as regional and geographic differences to help the client target initial markets for introducing the service. As part of the focus group discussions, PA tested perceived value of prototype systems. The results of the focus group discussions enabled the client’s product design team to develop a second-generation prototype.
One of the largest listed companies in Australasia
Implementing a customer preference modelling framework
This client has grown to be one of the largest companies in Australasia, listing on the Australian and New Zealand Stock Exchanges in mid-1998. In 1997 the client approached PA to carry out a customer preference modelling (CPM) framework as part of a retail leadership project. PA helped the client to understand and gain experience with CPM and provide insights into preferences and perceptions in the small business sector for life insurance products.
A UK government agency
Creating financial products that add value to customers
This government agency designs, markets and administers savings and investment products for over 30 million personal savers and investors. The client had launched the ‘ISA’ but the potential complexity of the product for customers was matched by the complexity of delivery for the provider. PA helped the client to understand in detail what strategies would add value for current and potential customers. PA took a step-by-step approach in its work with the client, beginning by agreeing the organisation’s high-level objectives for ISA. The subsequent steps involved creating hypotheses about ISA packages that might add value for customers and testing these hypotheses in a model that incorporated estimates of volume demand and assessment of cash flow. PA then helped optimise the product design against the objectives. The ISA has now established a strong and clear market position.
The US electric utility industry
Simulating customer decisions
As the electric utility industry accelerates toward competition in the USA, understanding how retail customers will make choices in the open market is critical for retaining existing retail customers and attracting new ones. PA designed a comprehensive 'Share Wars' study to help this clients' marketing executives, pricing managers, and product design and development managers to determine which products and services to offer to specific types of customers. It would also help them understand customers' willingness to pay for differentiated products, including several pricing products ranging from spot prices to fixed rates. PA delivered a market simulator that allows clients to simulate how different types of customers (residential and business customers) will make choices when faced with a set of electricity offerings in deregulated markets. The simulator also shows the resulting market shares for the client's product or products as well as for competing products.
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