It still amazes me to see how many companies boast about their ‘excellent’ customer services, yet offer a service which at best is ‘one size fits all’. When will companies recognise that as a customer we want a service that is tailored to suit our needs and requirements? It’s not that difficult to achieve this, it just takes good knowledge of the customer requirements and the desire to make a difference.

After being in the service industry for over 32 yrs I have been involved in setting up specific services designed and delivered for certain customer types.  I like to refer to it as customer treatment…but you can call it what you like as it all just boils down to the same thing which is understanding your customers and creating a service that suits their need.

I first came across this methodology whilst working for a large corporate mobile phone company.  They had a superb customer offering for their Corporate/Blue Chip companies which included dedicated account management, a person who would be in regular contact with the phone fleet manager, regular visits would take place to discuss the requirement of the company and such services as a loan phone were offered for the fleet manager to keep on site.

The company had a fantastic offering for their retail customer, the high street stores. They had tariffs to suit high/low usage and advisors were given the ability to call into the high street store to upgrade the phone.

However there was a huge gap in their offering to small businesses (SME/SOHO) who fell into the retail segment. These customers generated a large % of the company’s revenue and were more profitable because they were not offered the large discounts afforded to the corporate customers…yet no attention was given to how important their mobile phones were to them!

At a relatively young age I was given a blank sheet of paper and was tasked with setting up a specific service to suit this segment of customers needs. For me this task was not difficult and I set about and created ‘Business Services’.  The impact of this change was a reduction in churn, increased revenue through additional sales of mobile, tariffs and accessories.  The services we offered suited and matched their requirements.

So I guess what I’m saying is that there are many different types of customers and each of them have different needs. Only by ensuring each customer type is tailored for, can any organisation be confident in the fact that they provide ‘excellent’ customer services.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone about other customer types that they provider services to or of their experience in creating bespoke services.