Decision Support Solutions

DECISION SUPPORT SOLUTIONS

These solutions assist the client in making strategic decisions regarding their products or services.

CONCEPT SCANNING AND EVALUATION

Innovation is critical for many industries and organizations.  The LRC assists this process in two ways.

First, many companies have identified a problem faced by their market, but require additional information in order to begin framing potential solutions.  The LRC conducts scanning programs for these clients to determine the different facets of the problem facing different customers.  The output from this program gives our client greater specificity in constructing concepts.

Second, after concepts are produced – either product or service concepts – the LRC tests these with customers.   This testing procedure generally takes into the account:

  • The overall relationship with the customer and the extent to which that relationship – and behavior – will be favorably changed by the concept.
  • The extent to which customer segments that value these concepts are currently considered to be key or non-key.
  • Other factors, such as differences in generational cohorts, geographic regions, etc., that can affect the response to the concept.

SERVICE OPTIMIZATION MODELING

What levels of service and support should be provided as part of your organization’s core offering to customers?   Organizations struggle with the decision to spend more on higher levels of service:

  • Without knowing whether these higher service levels will produce sufficiently greater value for all or some of their customers;
  • And if it does, whether this greater value will translate into a change in their behavior that yields a return on the resource investment.

The LRC examines the result of different service levels through Service Optimization Modeling.  This program determines the desired level of service for different segments in the market and the extent to which those segments would be willing to pay for the additional service.  This information enables the organization to use customer response as one of their criteria in making resource allocation decisions.

MARKET SEGMENTATION SOLUTION

Nearly every market is composed of customer segments that have distinct preferences for the product and service experiences they want.  This drives their connection with the firms in the market.

Because of its importance to the relationship, the LRC conducts some level of segmentation in all programs.  What’s different about the Market Segmentation Solution is that it looks at the entire market of customers and competitive solutions.  The analysis provides a “preference rationale” for the current distribution of market shares across competitors.  This is superb input into the client’s strategy, marketing strategy, and/or product and service development program.

BEHAVIORAL TRIGGERS PROGRAM

Many companies have built their business models around specific behaviors that they believe are important to win, retain, and strengthen customer relationships.  These include account rep behaviors, customer service behaviors, and delivery behaviors – any customer-facing transaction.

To what extent does the customer report that the individuals within the organization execute those behaviors?  What impact do these behaviors have on relationships and customer behaviors?  Where should the organization focus its current efforts to move forward?

The LRC’s Behavioral Triggers Program addresses these questions.  Customers are asked to evaluate the company’s behaviors and then analysis is conducted to determine the relative impact of the behaviors.  This enables the organization to focus their efforts on managing the behavioral processes that currently have the most impact on customers.

PRICE SEGMENTATION AND ANALYSIS SOLUTION

Price is central to every customer relationship.  In most LRC loyalty programs price is found to be a moderate driver of the relationship.  Why?  The answer is twofold:  first, there is always a customer segment that is driven strongly by price; second, their perceptions of actual experiences with the supplier do not consistently match their expectations and, as a result, they believe the price to be too high.

The LRC conducts measurement and analysis on these issues.

  • How large is the Price-driven segment?  Who are they?  What is our relationship with them?  Are they a large part of our Vulnerable segment?  Or do they give us high value evaluations suggesting that are pricing is too low?
  • Is low product or service performance making our customers more price sensitive?  Which aspect of that performance is driving the price sensitivity?

These issues – and more – are addressed with the LRC Price Segmentation and Analysis Solution.  The program enables a complete understanding of price and the flexibility that exists with some customer segments.

GEOGRAPHIC EXPANSION MODELING

Many organizations “go to market” with branches, stores, offices, etc. in geographic areas.  They have questions about expansion:

  • In which new geographies will our offering be most successful?
  • Where are we successful now?
  • What are the characteristics that contribute that success?
  • To what extent are these characteristics present in new geographies?

The LRC models existing locations to determine the factors that contribute to success:  customer density, customer demographics, growth, competitors and more.  Having determined the impact of each on the success of current locations, the model is applied to the new location, inserting the values for each of these questions.  The result is a predictive model for the success of each location being considered.

Need help with your strategic decisions?

Contact us today to schedule a consultation call with one of our experienced Client Services Directors.