Why leading companies are prioratising customer strategy
Strategy that works: combining aspiration and execution to create lasting advantage
The co-author of ‘Strategy That Works’, Paul Leinwand, presents some of the key concepts from the book. For more information, watch the video and visit the following.
Today’s consumers expect personalized, seamless experiences across all channels. To meet these expectations, brands and retailers must deliver the right products at the right time through the right channels – managing an ever-growing number of touchpoints. This complexity, combined with rising costs and supply chain pressures, can erode profitability.
To achieve sustainable growth under these conditions, companies need to put customers at the center, strengthen loyalty, and reduce unnecessary costs. The foundation for this is an authentic, personalized multichannel strategy that creates positive experiences and builds long-term brand relationships. Expertise in leveraging customer data – and understanding how it drives growth – is now critical for success.
At PwC / Strategy&, we help businesses design holistic customer strategies that integrate business, experience, and technology to deliver real impact from day one. We start with the business model and channel strategy, analyze the portfolio, and refine go-to-market approaches. We also guide organizations through the transformation to a customer-centric model and, with our Fit for Growth approach, enable companies to optimize cost structures while continuing to grow – even in challenging environments.
How do we support our customers?
- Customer and experience strategy
- Marketing and sales
- Service and engagement
- Pricing and profitability
- Customer analytics
Customer and experience strategy
Companies must strike the right balance between generating value for the customer and value for the business. To do that, we help clients evaluate their overall customer landscape, determine which segments they should focus on, and then consistently engage with those customers in every interaction across products, services, solutions, and brand messaging. Our services include:
- Customer growth strategy
- Customer segmentation
- Experience strategy and design
- Value proposition development
- Digital customer insights and analytics
Marketing and sales
In the age of experience, we help clients take advantage of the most important digital trends and tools to integrate strategy, customer insight and analytics, experience design, and technology. We strive for marketing and sales excellence that enables innovation, supports “always on” customer engagement and go-to market strategies, and drives the bottom line. Our service offerings include:
- Marketing strategy and operating model
- Portfolio and brand management
- Sales force strategy and effectiveness
- Channel and RTM strategy
- Sales organisation design and alignment
- Digital marketing and commerce strategy
Service and engagement
Information is everywhere, experiences are integrated across channels, and individuals expect immediate customised responses. As these dramatic social and technological realities create new roles for customers and companies, we partner with clients to help them transform their digital and physical services so that they can thrive in this fast-changing market with the right strategies and organisational approach. Our service offerings include:
- Service strategy and revenue growth
- Omnichannel experience
- Contact centre optimisation
Pricing and profitability
Achieving superior pricing and margin management requires capabilities that blend mathematics and managerial science. More than ever, companies need a holistic pricing strategy that starts with the end-user, leverages a growing number of data sources, and reflects value delivered and received by channel partners. We work with clients to build the pricing strategies and capabilities that support profitable growth and optimise value capture. Our service offerings include:
- Pricing and revenue model strategy
- Customer portfolio profitability and optimisation
- Trade promotion, rebate, and discount effectiveness
Customer analytics
The key to understanding customers is getting the right insights. We support customer strategies with advanced quantitative and qualitative research techniques, leveraging big and little data to inform complex marketing, sales, pricing, and channel decisions. Our service offerings include:
- Consumer insight
- Marketing analytics
- Sales analytics
- Big data and digital analytics
Beverage maker uses loyalty to drive revenue
A beverage maker wanted to enhance its customer experience strategy and develop a more personalised loyalty programme. Strategy& created journey maps, assessed opportunities to transform its digital organisation, and evaluated more than 25 loyalty programme elements. As a result of our work, the client is now delivering a seamless experience across all channels, its customers’ mobile purchases increased by 22 per cent, and its membership and loyalty are estimated to be up double digits over the next five years.
Jewellery manufacturer finds headroom for growth
A leading jewellery manufacturer wanted to create a new, consumer-centric market segmentation to better understand customer attitudes, identify new market opportunities, and align its offerings to its target customers. Strategy& took a market-back approach to understanding consumer preferences, working with company data, leveraging market research, and conducting sophisticated analytics around consumer preferences. As a result of our work, we uncovered five distinct segments for which we recommended specific brand positioning options. The client is projected to achieve two to three times its absolute sales growth and make improvements in net margins of between 10 and 15 per cent.
International telco expands into new markets
Approaching an expansion into eight new markets, an international telecom company wanted to more systematically and strategically allocate its marketing spend across geographies. Strategy& delivered a clearly defined analytical and statistical framework, a tangible set of dashboards to properly measure the ROI on marketing spend, and a detailed evaluation of vendors best suited to deliver against this vision. Our efforts resulted in a nearly 3 per cent efficiency gain in marketing spend over three years.
Major retail bank drives utilisation of digital products
A major bank launched a customer acquisition initiative to better understand how to engage customers, as well as to leverage social media channels in their promotional mix to drive utilisation of digital products. Strategy& used a combination of social listening and analytical techniques to generate insights and identify opportunities to use social media to promote products and enhance customer engagement. Our work resulted in a distinct and measurable social media strategy linked to the existing marketing strategy and a five-pronged implementation plan.
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