By Kerry Juhl

The Responsibility & Privilege of Serving Customers

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider to our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so.”​

– Mahatma Gandhi, 1890 

This quote is more than 100-years old, but it is still true today.  The opportunity to serve customers is a privilege.  The responsibility of that privilege is ensuring the customer’s voice is heard and understood.  Brand teams need to know what their customers need and what they value, as decisions about products and services are made on the customers’ behalf.​

Defining Customer Value

Understanding customer value can be a differentiator for companies in today’s challenging market.  Simplistically, if a brand team has $1 to invest – or needs to cut $1 in spending – knowledge about what customers’ value must guide these business decisions to stay competitive. 

So let’s talk about customer value…In everyday conversations, value has many meanings including price, worth, or even benefits. It is imperative for organizations to operate with a common understanding of customer value.  From a marketing and branding perspective, it helps to think about customer value as an equation:
Customer Value equals Benefits minus Cost (CV=B-C)​. 

Benefits include the advantages of quality, service, image, brand, experience, and the functionality one gets or emotions one feels when using the product or service.  Cost is not only price – which we think of as cash, credit, interest, even service fees - but it can also include non-price terms such as time, effort, energy, and convenience.* 

When teams define their Customer Value Equation, they can clearly identify growth opportunities by emphasizing or improving aspects of an offering that customers value (where to invest) and they can identify cost savings by eliminating aspects of the offering that customers do not value (where to cut).

Developing the Customer Value Equation

SIVO employs a 5-Step Process to develop your Customer Value Equation.  In partnership with our client teams, we Mine, Explore and Quantify the customer value drivers leveraging Functional, Emotional, Life-Changing and Social Impact values. Note that the Quantify Step can be qualitative consumer learning, a quantitative survey or ideally, a combination of both.  The design of this step is dependent on how much past learning that the team already has in hand.

Four Categories of Customer Value

We then partner with teams to Develop & Refine the Customer Value Equation. Lastly, we help teams Apply their equation by assessing where their products/services are over/under-delivering and facilitate them through the generation of ideas to improve the customer experience.

The result of our process is rich with discoveries. These insights provide a unifying understanding of the target customers’ purchase drivers, must-haves and nice-to-haves regarding a product or service – giving teams confidence and clarity on what to do with $1 more or $1 less. 

Our Offer to You

SIVO is interested in sharing our Customer Value Equation experience and case studies with you and your insights team!  Our “CVE Download” can easily be part of an in-person or virtual “Lunch & Learn” or your next team meeting.

If you can answer “yes” to at least one of the following three questions, please reach out to SIVO.  

1. Do you want to better understand what your customers value? 

2. Do you want to improve how you serve your customers? 

3. Are you interested in improving: 

• Your products and services, 
• Customer loyalty​, 
• Market share, and 
• Revenue and profit growth?

To learn more, contact us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com.

*Referenced article by Gautam Mahajan https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2394964320903557

By Kerry Juhl

Growth. Every business in the world wants to grow, wants to live their purpose, follow their mission, serve their customers, and make money from it. But sometimes it is hard to know what to do, where to go, to find that growth. We ask ourselves questions like…

• Should we improve our products and services?  Or offer new ones? 
• Should we follow our competitors’ actions or do something completely different?  
• Should we invest in more marketing to drive awareness? 
• Or maybe we stay the course and focus on driving efficiency?   

Any of these paths could be the right direction for the business but at some point, teams must put a stake in the ground. That said, strategies don’t come out of thin air. It requires an examination of the world in which the business operates.

Teams need to thoroughly examine their:

• CUSTOMERS – what do customers want, need and value and how do they behave 
• MARKET – what are the industry or category dynamics, the competitive actions 
• OWN COMPANY – what structures, processes, groups are working well, or not 

The output of this examination can be organized into a framework that inspires growth strategies.  Growth Frameworks allow teams to reconsider the world in which they operate – literally putting it into a new “Frame” that will help identify issues and unearth opportunities for growth. The opportunities within the framework offer a “where to play” roadmap for teams, allowing them to pick a path forward and define their strategy for growth.

A Proven Process

SIVO has a tried-and-true process for developing growth frameworks that has been refined over the years and across industries. The SIVO team utilizes a specific process, research approach and expert facilitation to lead business teams to a clear and relevant growth framework. The process can be customized to fit the client organization based on factors such as their existing customer knowledge, the team’s availability to participate in the process and team size. Typically, 5 to 10 client team members work collaboratively, guided through five steps, beginning with the discovery of insights that point to future opportunities and ending with an activation plan that will advance the business.  

The 5 Steps

MINE

1. SIVO recommends starting with what clients already know, by mining existing company, customer, category, and industry knowledge.

BUILD

2. We fill knowledge gaps with custom qualitative research with your brand loyalists to explore their needs, motivations, and perceptions, to uncover key insights.
3. We quantify and prioritize the research findings with the appropriate audience.
4. We leverage expert facilitation to develop and refine the growth framework.

APPLY

5. Once the business team has aligned on the framework, we move the team to application by facilitating the development of an activation summary to outline future steps.

The Resulting Growth Framework

The output of this comprehensive process is a framework that provides teams with an inspiring construct that has easily digestible, business-relevant content and a common language for client teams to rally around, so they can clearly see and prioritize a path to growth. These frameworks can take many forms, including:  

• Consumer Jobs Map – Consumer Jobs Maps (a.k.a. Demand Space Maps) help explain why consumers make the choices they make, highlighting opportunities to deliver on unmet needs.
  
• Category Vision Framework – A category vision framework envisions the category of the future.  Although no one can predict the future, SIVO, in collaboration with the client business team, develops a vision for what the future state of the category will be 3 to 5 years from now.
  
• Customer Value Equation – A Customer Value Equation framework provides an understanding of what customers value about the total brand experience by mapping the key drivers of value and the assets that support those drivers.
  
• Competitive SWOT – A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) framework allows business teams to assess and analyze a current situation from all angles and to formulate future strategies in response to the findings. 

For more definitions and details on each of these frameworks, see SIVO’s Growth Frameworks: A Path to Action & Growth blog.

Applying the Growth Framework

Applying growth frameworks to the business can lead to growth strategies that span across the 4P’s of marketing.  

Product strategies could include Innovation to launch new products that fulfill demand or Renovation to improve existing products to better meet customer needs.

Pricing strategies could include Price Increases that strategically align with consumer preferences or Cost Engineering to improve profit margins by removing attributes that consumers don’t value.

Place strategies (i.e., Distribution strategies) could include retailer and channel distribution strategies or category management negotiations to improve product placement that aligns with customer shopping habits.  

Promotion strategies could include new advertising campaigns that focus on key benefits that align with what consumers need and value or in-store promotions to align promotional activity with how consumers shop the category.

Reach out to SIVO to learn more about Growth Frameworks

SIVO wants to share our proven process for elevating your insights into a growth framework that enables your team to set strategies that put your business on the path to growth. 

Reach out to the SIVO team at Contact@SIVOInsights.com to discuss the approach and growth framework that will be the right strategic fit for your team and your business. 

By Julie Rose

Whether in need of C-Suite leadership, mid-level managers or junior-level analysts, many companies are turning to fractional talent to fill temporarily open roles, expand their team bandwidth or bring new or specialized skillsets to meet business needs. SIVO, Inc. has worked with many companies to place fractional Consumer Insights Professionals (fCIPs) across all levels of the Insights function. Through this work, we have established a few guidelines for a positive outcome to make your outsourcing experiences successful.

To prepare for the fCIP to join your team and set everyone up for success, you should: 

1. Clearly outline your talent needs 

2. Interview contractor candidates 

3. Set up regular updates 

4. Provide timely feedback 

5. Show appreciation

Clearly Outline Your Fractional Talent Needs

It is important to be clear on the work that requires the expertise of fractional insights professionals. We’ve helped our best clients with this critical first step and it has had a huge impact on their ability to get the help they need.

Each quarter, I outline the prioritized initiatives for my team and in that process, I identify the critical work for my SIVO On Demand Talent resource. This practice provides both clear direction for the fractional talent and it also helps me estimate the hours needed and budget appropriately. Continually getting clear on priorities has led to a successful outcome for both Perdue and SIVO.  

     – Tara Campbell, Sr. Director, Insights, Analytics & Sensory, Perdue Farms

For one week, you should log all the work that you wish you had someone available to delegate to. When something comes up that you think, “wow, if only I had a resource to help,” write down the task and the skills you believe are needed. At the end of the week, you are well-equipped for a scope of work plan that can be short-term, long-term, for a fill-in role or a finite project. Your log of the work that needs to get done will help you identify a fCIP with the appropriate skillset to accomplish the work effectively and efficiently.

Interview Candidates

Once you are clear on what you are looking for in terms of skills, expertise, and know-how, it is a good idea to interview 2 to 3 candidates for the temporary role. It may seem like “overkill” when the role is temporary but in the end, finding a person that fits your team will make your work-life a lot easier. This is an opportunity to evaluate organizational fit, establish rapport and set expectations. During the interview, you will ask about previous experience the candidates will bring to the role, what expectations the candidates have, and gauge how the candidates will approach your specific role.

We looked at resumes for a few candidates for the role we had on our team.  On paper, all three looked equally suited to the role however after interviewing the candidates we realized the best cultural fit with our team and organization. I appreciated the opportunity SIVO provided to meet with more than one candidate for the role.

     – Marnie Pfeifer, VP Customer Experience Leader

Set Up Regular Updates

Once you’ve chosen the fCIP for your role, it’s important to establish a clear work plan and a good working relationship. Through regular check-ins and updates, you will be able to align on objectives, stay informed on progress, and understand any barriers that might need to be addressed. Regular updates allow the insights professional to meet smaller deadlines throughout the project while keeping the overall timeline and success metrics front and center. 

Provide Timely Feedback

The regular updates will also facilitate the ability to provide timely feedback throughout the project. It is critical to invest some of your time to monitor progress and be actively engaged in the work of your new resource. This professional comes with experience and expertise, but may need guidance to navigate the organization, such as recognizing unwritten rules or norms that are tied to the organizational culture. There might be a need to provide constructive feedback, that if given early, will set the fCIP up for success. Feedback will provide clarity and optimize the experience for both parties – you and your contract talent. 

Show Appreciation

Once you’ve built a good working relationship with your fCIP, you will likely want to tap into this resource again in the future, when the need arises. Providing positive feedback and showing appreciation for the contributions this person is making to your organization will increase satisfaction in doing the current role and increase the likelihood of taking on future assignments. Appreciation can be shown with a simple thank you or by recommending this talent to others in the industry who may also need this type of resource. 

Following these steps will help you find the right fCIP and make the entire process easier for you and your team.  

For fractional Consumer Insights Professionals, you can lean on SIVO’s On Demand Talent team to walk you through the process and provide you with the support you need to get the right talent working on your behalf. We are passionate about matching our clients’ needs with our fCIP’s experience and skills. 

Reach out today to learn more about SIVO On Demand Talent. Contact@SIVOInsights.com  

by Kerry Juhl

Consumer Personas are a great tool for bringing your consumer target to life for your organization, to inspire growth ideas, new brand experiences and product innovation.  It is a representation of your target segment based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data.  It summarizes your consumers’ lifestyle, values, needs, challenges, and preferences, so that it can be easily shared and digested across the organization.

At a high level, here is SIVO’s guide on how to build consumer personas: 

• Collect quantitative data via consumer segmentation: Start by identifying the market your product plays in and divide this universe into consumer groups that have similar characteristics, such as demographics, psychographics, and behavioral patterns.
  
• Identify patterns within the segment: Analyze the segments to identify common patterns, trends, and preferences among the different groups. Look for insights that can help you understand their interests, pain points, and buying behaviors. At this point, teams can narrow their focus by choosing one or a few consumer segments that are most likely to need and have the potential means to purchase the product or service that you offer.
  
• Dig deeper with qualitative research: Once the consumer segments have been identified, conduct qualitative research, to delve deeper into the consumer mindset and better understand what makes them unique and relevant to the business. Using techniques such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, in-store shop-alongs, or in-home ethnographic research, you can uncover the underlying motivations, emotions and values that drive consumer behaviors and purchase decisions. This deepens the teams’ empathy and intuition about the consumer segments.
  
• Create consumer personas: Develop distinct personas that represent key segments that are important and relevant to your business. The personas should not portray one specific consumer but should be a semi-fictional representation of an ideal customer within a segment.  Overall, the persona should include a name, age, job, hobbies, mindset, goals, challenges, and a brief back story.  Note: Psychographics, goals and purchase motivations are most important in understanding what problems the persona has that your company can solve.  
  

Building your Consumer Personas 

Key information that should be considered when building consumer personas includes:   

• Demographics: Age, gender, location, marital status, education, income 
• Psychographics: Interests, values, attitudes, lifestyle, personality traits
• Goals and Motivations: What they aim to achieve, what drives their decision-making 
• Pain Points and Challenges: Obstacles they face, problems they want to solve that are related to your market
• Buying Behavior: Where and how they shop, preferred channels, factors influencing purchase decisions, in relation to your industry or category
• Media preferences: Preferred media channels, social media usage, favorite websites, online communities

Check out these other SIVO blogs on consumer targets and  consumer segmentation, to better understand the inputs and context for consumer personas. 

Making Consumer Personas Interesting

The goal is to bring the consumer to life in an interesting and inspirational way. This information needs to be interesting and easy to read so that it gets internalized by the organization. Here are a few tips: 

Keep it Brief:  A good persona should be 1 to 3 pages in length.  Ideally, there would be a 1-page summary and if needed, 1 to 2 follow-up pages with actionable details and insights. 

Use Visuals: A persona should be visually interesting.  Use photos, graphics, or infographics to bring the consumer persona to life and make them feel more tangible and relatable to your team. 

Use Narratives and Quotes: Storytelling is an important part of building your persona. Use the data to create a short 1-paragraph narrative that describes the consumer persona – who they are, what they need, and their underlying motivations.

Include a Key Consumer Insight: It is important to include a one-sentence insight that describes the underlying motivation that would make them potentially interested in buying your product or service.

With the data summarized and visualized into clear and succinct personas, it is easy to understand and empathize with your consumer target, i.e., the segment of consumers that will inspire your growth ideas, marketing communications, promotions, distribution plans and new product innovation. Your team can now tailor brand messaging, content, and product offerings to align with the needs and preferences of key consumer targets. It is also easy to socialize the learning across the organization and agency partners in an efficient and effective way. 

Maintaining Relevance of Consumer Personas

Consumer personas are foundational marketing and insights deliverables that will inspire your teams’ growth ideas and guide your agency partners for years. For this reason, you need to invest in ongoing maintenance to ensure continued relevance to your organization. Depending on the volatility and competitive dynamics within your market, you will want to: 

The success of your consumer persona profiles depends on the quality of your research, the depth of your understanding and getting it to land within your organization and with agency partners. Regularly leveraging the personas while also iterating and improving upon them will help you stay in tune with your consumers and maintain a competitive advantage in the market.  

Your Source for Expert Customer Insights 

At SIVO Inc., we are dedicated to helping our clients understand their consumer targets by designing and executing consumer segmentations, following up with qualitative research and building consumer personas. We can then facilitate activation sessions with your team to develop action plans and strategies that leverage these insights.  

Reach out to us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com or go to SIVOInsights.com today to schedule a discovery call and connect!