Gaia and TripleWin took a careful look at Gaia’s clients, their experiences and their future expectations with the goal of enabling Gaia to serve its clients even better on their Sustainability Journey.
A customer experience project is easy to design but much more complex to truly actualize. To make a turnaround in customer experience, three agendas are needed: strategic, operative and commercial.
Strategic agenda shows where a company is going and what its goals are. Operative agenda guides and prioritizes actions to achieve set goals. Commercial agenda is focused on building customer experience. These three agendas offer a company a possibility to increase its turnover, profitability and customer satisfaction.
Customer experience maturity model
A standardized customer process enables a company to move from a random customer experience to a predictable one. Furthermore, a planned experience requires differentiation, which creates an emotion-based customer experience.
At the level of customer loyalty, the experience is based on trust gained on both personal and professional level. Customer loyalty is the degree to which customers experience positive feelings for and engage in positive behavior toward a company or a brand.
Why customer experience?
Customer loyalty can accelerate organic growth on several fronts. B2B customers who are “promoters” typically have an average lifetime value three to eight times longer than that of “detractors,” depending on segment and industry. Promoters stay longer with the company, buy more products, usually cost less to serve and are more likely to refer the supplier to colleagues and friends. Advocacy correlates closely with sales growth, expanded share of wallet, sales force productivity, greater market share, greater employee engagement and higher profitability. As a result, B2B loyalty leaders tend to grow four to eight percentage points above their market’s annual growth.
Gaia’s customer experience project
Gaia’s customer experience program consisted of two parts: diagnosis and choices. The diagnosis phase included the definition of strategic reach and the criteria for interviews as well as the way interviews would be executed. The interviews focused on the future expectations and values of Gaia’s customers and key employees.
Based on the gathered information, TripleWin built a customer expectation map, which included clients’ future expectations for Gaia and for a world-class partner within the market segment. The project also mapped Gaia’s strengths and development areas.
Creating world-class partnerships
The key trends among Gaia’s customers were energy efficiency and business profitability, predictive leadership in sustainable development and responsibility as part of daily business.
Customers estimated that sustainability will be an integral part of their business strategy, that development has to be enduring and predictive, and that responsibility is an essential value in their business. Executives considered sustainability a daily routine, in which their own example is of utmost importance. Good, solid governance, risk management and compliance reporting was also seen as a competitive advantage. Companies are clearly starting to include sustainability in their human resource strategy as well.
Prioritized customer expectations for a world-class partner – Gaia – were caring, trust and customer benefit. Rational customer signals included wide competence, capability to solve problems, shared values and easy collaboration.
Clients rated Gaia strong in expertise, excellent in customer collaboration and of high quality in project work.
Gaia’s customer experience profile
Gaia has a long track record in sustainable business, and customers value its competence and brand.
Gaia’s business model is strongly based on expertise and trusted project work. Gaia’s customer experience is based on rational elements that are in good shape. Customer expectations for a world-class partner are largely based on emotional indicators. By connecting emotional elements with its commercial agenda, Gaia can differentiate itself from its competitors. Gaia’s core product and service is the Sustainability Journey concept. Investments to strengthen it will enforce Gaia’s sustainability brand.
Sustainable partner – Creating peace of mind and business opportunities
Gaia offers unique services, which enable its customers to strengthen their license to operate. Clients believe that Gaia can help them to tap into a wide spectrum of new opportunities through sustainable business.
There are three reasons why TripleWin believes that Gaia Group will be the category leader in its market in the future. Firstly, B2B customers who are “promoters” typically have an average lifetime value three to eight times longer than that of “detractors”. Secondly, B2B loyalty leaders tend to grow four to eight percentage points above their market’s annual growth. Thirdly, a customer-driven enterprise maximizes its Customer Lifetime Value and the success of its customers.
Jari Mielonen, Executive Coach and Partner, TripleWin Oy
TripleWin is a global business development and coaching organization focusing on customer experience leadership in the B2B market. Gaia and TripleWin executed a customer experience project in 2014 with the goal of enabling Gaia to serve its clients even better on their Sustainability Journey.
