Any business worth its salt knows all of this and aims to take advantage of this intelligently and in a disciplined way. The question is often not about what they need to do but how to do it. How do you increase your customer retention? How do you give your customers what they want?
The answer is through focused and robust customer understanding. With this question in mind, Ipsos undertook research in mid-2014 to investigate customer needs with special focus on exactly what their expectations are during the transactional and ownership experience.
The research was conducted in an automotive retail environment but the approach and many of the learnings could be applied to other industries.
Ipsos uncovered the customer experience "journey" relative to expectations and needs. This includes:
- Pain points
- Moments of Truth
- Drivers of Delight
These points came together to form a very detailed Customer Journey Map providing very specific examples of what a business can do to better service and engage with its clients. It includes:
Some of the top-line (basic but important) minimum expectations for each stage of the automotive sales and service process - the so-called Customer Journey. If these expectations are not met, the customers are likely to be dissatisfied. Beyond the wealth of specific information relating to the 'pain points' , 'drivers of delight' and 'moments of truth', are directions for actually meeting these expectations - especially with regards to communication and the softer more emotional dimension. The pillars of engagement tell us about different types of customers, together with their unique needs, motivations and specific requirements.Ipsos used the world-renowned and market-leading psychographic approach, Censydiam, to understand the key drivers and motivators of the different types of customers. The detail and assumptions drawn, based on these robust techniques, have allowed us to develop a very holistic and detailed picture of the different types of customers that exist in the automotive environment and simply speaking, to identify what exactly these customers want.
The full report is available from Ipsos.
About Ipsos - Game Changers
Ipsos is an innovative, entrepreneurial, client-focused organisation, providing research services to clients on a global basis. We set ourselves high standards and aim to work collaboratively in partnership with our teams in order to service our clients most effectively.
Ipsos is proud to be the only global market research company that is still controlled and operated by market researchers. We aim to remain the natural home for intellectually curious and passionate researchers.
Our goal is simple: to be our clients' preferred research partners in our areas of specialisation, based on BQC (Better, Quicker, Cheaper) methodologies and processes. We want our clients to be proud and pleased to work with us - and we want each one of us to be proud and pleased to offer our clients high quality standards, efficiency and intelligence.
