Wk4-02 Channels and Customer Relationships Presentation
Welcome to module 4. Now that we've selected our most important customer and clarified our value propositions, it's time to focus on channels and customer relationships. At the basic level channels are the mechanisms for how we communicate and deliver our value propositions to our customer segment. What channels have in common is that they are key touch points that play a critical role in customer satisfaction and customer retention. Channels are typically broken down into types and phases. [BLANK AUDIO] Examples of channel types are your sales force, web sales, retail stores, host sellers, and depending on the type of product. Perhaps warehouses and distribution centers. The channel phases, as we discussed, channels play a key role in customer communications. The traditional channel phases are awareness, evaluation, purchase, delivery, and after sales. Let's now turn over to Building Block #4, Customer Relationships. This is closely tied to Channels. Every business needs to decide what kind of relationships will be required in order to make the business model work. Customer relationships can range from highly personal to automated. Categories typically include personal assistants, dedicated personal assistants, especially in the business to business marketplace, self-service, automated services, and at the ultimate level, the co-creation of products and services with your customers. It is important that all entrepreneurs and innovators remember that the strategy you use to attract and acquire customers may, indeed, be very different from the strategy you use to retain your best customers. In fact, research shows that the best path to profitability often comes more from customer retention than customer acquisition. As an example, for my Business Model Canvas project, I'm thinking that the most important channels will be the creation of a direct sales force and an innovative and engaging website that offers program demos that will help parents of college age students to quickly understand and experience our value propositions. Now let's talk about the customer relationships. Again research tells us that we as human beings are not thinking creatures who feel, but rather feeling creatures that think. So we need to determine which positive emotions do we need to focus on in order to effectively create, deliver and capture value. With regards to our new product idea The Career Readiness Global Learning Program, we will deliver a product emotional interface that focuses on three positive emotions. The first positive motion is confidence. Our objective is to have parents view us as the trusted curators for finding the best career planning information, techniques, and tools. The second positive emotion powerful. We want parents to feel like they have high quality, powerful, career experts who can both help and influence their children to create a realistic and winning career plan. And the last positive emotion will focus on, if parents buy our product, they will be more optimistic that the investment that they made in their son or daughter's college education will pay off, by their child landing a great job in their most desired career field. Now, it's your turn. Here are your modules 4 assignments. Again, make sure you participate in the discussion and answer the question, what is the most important thing I learned while watching the animated video Navigating the Environment? Second, there are two application assignments. With your idea in mind, identify and describe your channels,determine or describe the desired customer relationships and then add your decisions to your business model canvas. Again, good luck with these assignments and we'll get together again at the beginning of module 5.
