I was asked recently if any consideration should be made to market segmentation strategies in a Customer Experience model. The simple answer is “Yes”. The more complex question is “How” to incorporate a market segmentation strategy into your customer experience model.
You should consider how different your target market customers are from your core strategic market. If there is enough differentiation, then you should consider building a separate Customer Life cycle model for those market segments. The key attributes are the way a customer buys, their expected customer success outcomes and how they need to be supported in order to get to a fully engaged state. If these create enough differences in the way your company needs to sell, implement and mature the customer, then a separate Customer Life cycle model should be developed with unique customer journey maps for each stage of the new life cycle. This will drive the plan for people, processes and technology needs within your company to execute on a focused customer experience for that market segment that will drive results quicker, better and faster.
For example, if you are now targeting Financial services with either a new version of a current product or a new product altogether, then you may need to consider mapping out a separate customer lifecycle model. The differences would be defined as follows:
Financial Services solution requires a different set of value outcomes which may require a different services implementation best practice approach or on-boarding process.
How they buy and what value they expect may be different including a varying price point
How they expect to be supported may be different (this could be from security requirements to business critical usage requirements)
The Customer Experience team would formulate a new Customer Life Cycle Model for Financial Services. From the model, they would define the new journey maps and determine where the gaps are from what exists today and what needs to be modified or created to accommodate the required changes to support the new Financial Services market segment. The last step would be to evaluate organizational changes, resources required and financial requirements to support the new Financial Services Customer Life Cycle model.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated.