Companies that utilize customer-experience-management software such as that provided by Satmetrix can create a movie of individual customer responses over time. Most will be distressed by what they see. Managers feel accountable for improving profits but not relationship quality. They cut product or service quality. They impose extra fees. They find ways to get customers to pay more money without giving them more value. Over time, all these strategies push customers leftward. The customers may still be profitable, but they aren’t happy. The goal, of course, should be to reverse that push and move them rightward, eventually into profitable promoter status. Tracking the movement of specific accounts on the grid through time can help make this goal a reality. Sometimes just seeing the grid can spark targeted action. When a division of General Electric analyzed its accounts on the grid, managers developed specific strategies for each sector, recognizing that the urgency and economic implications would be different for each one. Customers in the top left, for example, were profitable but angry—and the division promptly dispatched a cross-functional team to visit each one, to probe for the causes of their dissatisfaction, and to develop solutions. A consumer-oriented company can’t visit each customer, but it might ask every member of the senior team to contact a sample of these customers to find out why they’re so mad.
In general, though, you want to use the grid strategically. It helps you determine which customer segments to focus on, where to allocate resources, and how to design appropriate propositions for each. The grid can help you visualize and manage what may be the quintessential business process: creating more profitable-promoter customers. There are t ...