Segmentation and work with the client base of web-studio / agency
Hi, Habr! Today I would like to continue our cycle of materials on the life of web studios and digital agencies - and talk about working with the client base, as well as specific principles / approaches to its segmentation.
* By the way, this topic is also understood in detail in our recently launched free special project from 11 video lectures about marketing, sales and customer service in the studio.
Often, talking with representatives of small studios of 10-15 people, I hear “ We have 3-4 projects in production and a half dozen clients for support, I know them all in person, why do I need some kind of segmentation and some metrics on him? ". In general, this is a fairly reasonable question. Why make an additional garden, if all customers, and so to all?
')
Firstly, your customer base is not only your current customers, but also “outflow” and “failure” (I'll write a little more below). With this in mind, the size of the base of a dozen clients immediately turns into several tens / hundreds, or even thousands, of contacts.
Secondly, the assessment of the client's prospects should not only be emotionally expert (“ This client is kind of cool, now he orders almost nothing, but soon we will add it ” or “ Oh, them, some small company, a business card site they did it - well, let them pay a couple of thousand a month for hosting ”), but also rational, based on the real KPI values.
Only in this way we will be able to give a 360-degree assessment and avoid a situation where all the forces of the company are thrown on the development of a large federal brand, for which a year ago they made one banner and who are not particularly eager to continue working with us, but a small client who needs a lot do on the Internet, misses the attention of client managers, slowly merging with competitors.
Speaking about working with a client base, in the agency market usually means a pool of your current, existing clients. In fact, your client base is significantly larger and consists of three large blocks, each of which should have its own work strategy.
The idea of ​​segmentation of something is the selection of a subset of objects (clients), about which we know more than about the entire base (at the level of correspondence to one or another feature or group of features). Thus, having made a filter on our client base on the basis of some indicators, we build work and communication with clients of this segment, taking into account the knowledge that they fall under our filter.
For example, making a filter on customer satisfaction with our services can be assigned to two segments of different managers, one of whom is able to develop relations with a loyal client well, and the other copes with “reloading relations”.
Base segmentation can be based on standard parameters that characterize our customers:
Let us now try to cite a few examples of more unusual approaches to the segmentation of the client base:
Let us give an example of a rather simple approach in ranking our “refusal” - the base of clients who contacted us with a request but did not become current clients.
The purpose of segmentation is to highlight the most promising companies with which to try to resume communication over time.
I will make a small remark. Unfortunately, more than half of the companies on the market generally do not keep records of incoming calls. Often a company gets into a CRM (or even just an excel file) only after it becomes a client. This is a very serious mistake, and if you do not keep records of incoming calls, you must immediately begin this process, such a base is one of the important assets of the studio’s business.
So, in our table of accounting of incoming calls, for each client we enter three additional parameters, each of which is evaluated on a scale from 1 to 5:
Further, for each client, we summarize these three values. We get a certain “renew” index - the attractiveness of renewing contact with customers - an integral indicator by which we can now sort our database (or break it into large segments). We rank - and most of the efforts we focus on customers with the maximum Renew (in our example, with the company MiddleProm).
Of course, these three indicators are not a paradigm, you can remove some, some add. In the same way - it is not necessary to make a scale of 5 points; you can limit yourself to the “good / bad” switch.
And in continuation of the topic, a couple of words about the date of the resumption of communication. At what point in time is it better to resume a dialogue with a client with a high renewal index? All individually, but you can offer two options:
Probably, almost all readers have heard about the method of segmentation of products of the Boston Consulting Group.
All products are divided into four segments depending on the market share of the product and the growth rate of the niche. I will not stop separately, you can read more, for example, here .
On the basis of this approach, it is possible to make an “adaptation” of the matrix for the business of the web-studio and the segmentation of the client base.
Instead of the project share in the market, we introduce the indicator “ customer activity ” along the abscissa axis - to what extent the client is initiative, he himself proposes to make new projects, requests services, and is interested in something new. In general, how much he is "motor".
On the ordinate axis, instead of the market growth rate, we introduce the indicator “ customer capacity ” — how much more we can offer for the customer in our specialization. If we have a large brand that has already launched everything that can be done in the digital environment and is not going to develop a particular direction, the capacity is low. If the client has just entered the market - and in our area we can offer him a whole lot more - the capacity is high.
And now we segment our customers in exactly the same way in four variations:
Another simple way to segmentation is RFM segmentation of the base. We enter three parameters: Recency (old), Frequency (frequency), Monetary (revenue) and for each client we assign values ​​from 1 to 5. Or if the base is small - from 1 to 2. Select the segments:
You can read more about RFM segmentation, for example, here .
Segmentation of the base is possible in terms of customer satisfaction. Let's consider the easiest way to calculate such a Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI).
In this article I tried to highlight both a number of general principles and several interesting approaches. Of course, the topic itself is much broader than several techniques that I described today. And as always - often the discussion in the comments is even more interesting than the material itself =)
Perhaps you will be interested in our other materials about the client service zone in studios and agencies:
And last week, together with Megaplan, we launched a large special project, within which you can get free access to a comprehensive course of 11 video lectures (as well as a bunch of materials, presentations, templates and samples) about marketing, sales and customer service in web studios and digital agencies. There is also a separate lecture about today's topic. Read more at www.megaplan.ru/digital .
Sincerely, Terekhov Andrey
* By the way, this topic is also understood in detail in our recently launched free special project from 11 video lectures about marketing, sales and customer service in the studio.
Often, talking with representatives of small studios of 10-15 people, I hear “ We have 3-4 projects in production and a half dozen clients for support, I know them all in person, why do I need some kind of segmentation and some metrics on him? ". In general, this is a fairly reasonable question. Why make an additional garden, if all customers, and so to all?
')
Firstly, your customer base is not only your current customers, but also “outflow” and “failure” (I'll write a little more below). With this in mind, the size of the base of a dozen clients immediately turns into several tens / hundreds, or even thousands, of contacts.
Secondly, the assessment of the client's prospects should not only be emotionally expert (“ This client is kind of cool, now he orders almost nothing, but soon we will add it ” or “ Oh, them, some small company, a business card site they did it - well, let them pay a couple of thousand a month for hosting ”), but also rational, based on the real KPI values.
Only in this way we will be able to give a 360-degree assessment and avoid a situation where all the forces of the company are thrown on the development of a large federal brand, for which a year ago they made one banner and who are not particularly eager to continue working with us, but a small client who needs a lot do on the Internet, misses the attention of client managers, slowly merging with competitors.
Customer base - not just your current customers.
Speaking about working with a client base, in the agency market usually means a pool of your current, existing clients. In fact, your client base is significantly larger and consists of three large blocks, each of which should have its own work strategy.
- Current customers . Pool your current clients. As a rule, from the point of view of customer service, the main focus is on this segment, which is not always the right decision.
- "Failure" . A large pool of customers who appealed to you but did not become your customers. As a rule, this is a rather large segment, significantly exceeding the volume of the first block. For this segment, a special communication strategy should be worked out - after all, it is also an important asset of your business.
- "Outflow" . Companies that were your customers, but for some reason left. Similar to the previous paragraph, it is important to set up separate business processes for working with this segment of the client base.
Standard base segmentation techniques
The idea of ​​segmentation of something is the selection of a subset of objects (clients), about which we know more than about the entire base (at the level of correspondence to one or another feature or group of features). Thus, having made a filter on our client base on the basis of some indicators, we build work and communication with clients of this segment, taking into account the knowledge that they fall under our filter.
For example, making a filter on customer satisfaction with our services can be assigned to two segments of different managers, one of whom is able to develop relations with a loyal client well, and the other copes with “reloading relations”.
Base segmentation can be based on standard parameters that characterize our customers:
- Type of orders. For example, "promo-site", "e-commerce projects", etc.
- Money / Profitability. What kind of profitability (or total revenue) do we work for one or another customer segment?
- Balance initiation / maintenance. We distinguish two groups of clients - who are active and are constantly asking for something new, and those who need to be “persuaded” for a long time - it is obvious that the strategy of work will vary greatly.
- Frequency of orders. How often a toi or other client uses our services.
- Prescription orders. How long ago was the last time we provided any services to a client.
- Outflow, Churn Rate, life cycle slices.
- “Brand”, image effect, effect “portfolio”. How important is the client in terms of setting its projects in the portfolio.
- Customer Loyalty, CSI. How loyal and satisfied with our work this or that client.
- Development potential. How great is the potential (in terms of our services) of client development - or is it already “packed to capacity”.
- and a large number of other indicators, one way or another characterizing our customers.
Let us now try to cite a few examples of more unusual approaches to the segmentation of the client base:
Contact renewal attractiveness index
Let us give an example of a rather simple approach in ranking our “refusal” - the base of clients who contacted us with a request but did not become current clients.
The purpose of segmentation is to highlight the most promising companies with which to try to resume communication over time.
I will make a small remark. Unfortunately, more than half of the companies on the market generally do not keep records of incoming calls. Often a company gets into a CRM (or even just an excel file) only after it becomes a client. This is a very serious mistake, and if you do not keep records of incoming calls, you must immediately begin this process, such a base is one of the important assets of the studio’s business.
So, in our table of accounting of incoming calls, for each client we enter three additional parameters, each of which is evaluated on a scale from 1 to 5:
- The power of the brand . How attractive the client brand to us is, how much it affects our portfolio, will give us a positive marketing effect. Gazprom is the top five. Incomprehensible "Myloprom" - unit.
- The appeal of the order . How interesting was the specific order with which the client came to us? It could have been a big brand, but with a small task (or was not ready to pay the amount we needed).
- Failure status . How close we were to getting the order / winning the tender. Almost won, did not reach quite a bit, the client was pleased with us - the five. We performed poorly, made an unsuccessful KP, there was almost no chance - one.
Further, for each client, we summarize these three values. We get a certain “renew” index - the attractiveness of renewing contact with customers - an integral indicator by which we can now sort our database (or break it into large segments). We rank - and most of the efforts we focus on customers with the maximum Renew (in our example, with the company MiddleProm).
Of course, these three indicators are not a paradigm, you can remove some, some add. In the same way - it is not necessary to make a scale of 5 points; you can limit yourself to the “good / bad” switch.
And in continuation of the topic, a couple of words about the date of the resumption of communication. At what point in time is it better to resume a dialogue with a client with a high renewal index? All individually, but you can offer two options:
- Shortly before the design of the project . We know with which request the client came and we can estimate when the winning bidder must launch it. We contact for a week or two before the planned deadline. Perhaps the current contractor has already “screwed up” and the client is waiting for us in order to “save the harvest”.
- A couple of months after the opening of the project . The overwhelming majority of companies have problems with quality support - and two months after launch, it is possible that the client has accumulated a large number of complaints and dissatisfaction - it's time to try to drag such a client to yourself for support and development.
Analog of BCG matrix
Probably, almost all readers have heard about the method of segmentation of products of the Boston Consulting Group.
All products are divided into four segments depending on the market share of the product and the growth rate of the niche. I will not stop separately, you can read more, for example, here .
On the basis of this approach, it is possible to make an “adaptation” of the matrix for the business of the web-studio and the segmentation of the client base.
Instead of the project share in the market, we introduce the indicator “ customer activity ” along the abscissa axis - to what extent the client is initiative, he himself proposes to make new projects, requests services, and is interested in something new. In general, how much he is "motor".
On the ordinate axis, instead of the market growth rate, we introduce the indicator “ customer capacity ” — how much more we can offer for the customer in our specialization. If we have a large brand that has already launched everything that can be done in the digital environment and is not going to develop a particular direction, the capacity is low. If the client has just entered the market - and in our area we can offer him a whole lot more - the capacity is high.
And now we segment our customers in exactly the same way in four variations:
- Difficult children - low activity, but large capacity. The goal is to swing the client's activity in order to translate it into the star segment.
- Stars - and the activity of working with the client is high, and you can still do a lot of things for him. Everything is clear - we are developing and “pumping out”.
- Dairy cows - the activity is still high, but the capacity comes to an end - a little more, and we have nothing to offer - then the activity will decrease and the client will turn into a “dog”. We must look for new niches and areas of services to expand capacity.
- Dogs - and almost nothing can be done, and the client is "tight." Shoot =) Or give it to younger partners.
RFM segmentation
Another simple way to segmentation is RFM segmentation of the base. We enter three parameters: Recency (old), Frequency (frequency), Monetary (revenue) and for each client we assign values ​​from 1 to 5. Or if the base is small - from 1 to 2. Select the segments:
- Customer 5-5-5 - orders frequently, most recently ordered recently, revenue is large - a premium segment with the appropriate treatment.
- Customer 1-5-5. Brought a lot of money, ordered often, but last time ordered a long time ago. Akhutng, you need to do something and urgently renew the relationship.
- Customer 5-5-1. I ordered a lot, often, but there is almost no revenue from it. Maybe he? Well, or partners to transfer ...
You can read more about RFM segmentation, for example, here .
CSI - customer satisfaction segmentation
Segmentation of the base is possible in terms of customer satisfaction. Let's consider the easiest way to calculate such a Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI).
- We take a relevant sample of the customer base;
- We call them around (or online, but the quality of communication is obviously worse) and ask one question: “Rate on a 10-point scale how ready you are to recommend our services to your friends”;
- Based on the results, we count the number of marks for each score. Select the category of "attraction" (the number of high marks in the range of 8-10) and "detract" (low marks of 1-3).
- We calculate the index CSI = attraction (8+) / detract (3-); Of course, it must be much higher than one, otherwise you have serious problems.
- We carry out evaluations quarterly, we look at the dynamics both for the company and for specific managers and clients.
Conclusion
In this article I tried to highlight both a number of general principles and several interesting approaches. Of course, the topic itself is much broader than several techniques that I described today. And as always - often the discussion in the comments is even more interesting than the material itself =)
Perhaps you will be interested in our other materials about the client service zone in studios and agencies:
And last week, together with Megaplan, we launched a large special project, within which you can get free access to a comprehensive course of 11 video lectures (as well as a bunch of materials, presentations, templates and samples) about marketing, sales and customer service in web studios and digital agencies. There is also a separate lecture about today's topic. Read more at www.megaplan.ru/digital .
Sincerely, Terekhov Andrey
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/183698/
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