Why I am offered filter coffee when I don’t even have a coffee maker?

The companies I come across often have really neat Customer Strategies, but when I take a closer look at what I personally receive from these companies something doesn’t add up. ICA are supposed to be really good at understanding their customers. I recently moved house and am currently getting a lot of attention from nearby stores, welcoming me with different offers. The ICA store is giving me a free package of filter coffee and the opportunity to buy extra cheap cookies. I haven’t owned a coffee maker for 15 years and since I am gluten intolerant, I don’t buy cookies. My friends are served Nespresso-coffee and homemade sweets. To formulate a strategy is not hard, the challenge lie in making it a reality. “We will have the most satisfied customers in our industry” – is a fairly common customer vision. To reach it is pretty tough. The employee that meets the customer must have the right information at hand to be able to deliver on that promise. The customer service agent that is prompted to end the call with the delivery of an NBA (Next Best Action) needs to understand why it’s important, and how this will add value to the customer and the company. The analyst setting the NBA need to have enough data to analyse in order to provide a relevant recommendation. The communicator creating the content needs to know more about the customer and the context. The customer vision needs to be broken down to customer strategies, which in turn needs to be broken down to channel-, contact- and offer strategies etc which then needs to be clarified with a content that can be operationalized. Let s be honest, to what degree does your company manage to operationalize your strategies?! Because getting satisfied and profitable customers is not a strategy, it’s a craft. I have just ordered the book containing the quote ”Reality eats strategy for breakfast”, by Robert Rowland Smith. I hope it can help me to make more companies understand.   Anna Leo Principal Consultant at Recoordinate   We at Recoordinate make customer strategies become reality. Do you want to know more? Please contact us at info@recoordinate.com