Building Loyal Customers Across Borders

We’ve mapped business processes in more than 300 enterprises across six continents, deploying more than 25,000 processes and 750,000 process improvements worldwide.

Building customer loyalty across town or across borders comes from understanding what customers want and then building a better Customer Value Package (CVP).

Customer value comes through customers’ perception, not the tangible products or services they receive. This is true all over the world. Delighted customers become faithful users of our services. When you’re global, that’s just a little more complex.

The CVP begins by knowing your value proposition in target markets. This should be relatively consistent country-to-country, and also capture the essential purpose of your company’s existence. 

The value proposition defines:

Who is the customer. Develop a customer profile by writing a few short sentences describing common traits and customer characteristics.

What is the customer’s problem, want or need. Understand the level of desire a customer has for your products and services. This desire can be stated as a problem to be solved, such as an injury to be healed, or as a strong want or need, such as wanting the newest gadget or needing an automobile to get to work. The more painful the unsolved problem or the greater the want or need, the more important your company can be to the customer.

How you solve the customer’s problem, or satisfy their want or need. The CVP is the offering you provide to fulfill your company’s purpose. The goal is to provide a CVP that solves your customer’s painful problem or satisfies a want or need in a unique and better way that provides you with a competitive advantage. 

The customer’s perception of the benefit of your CVP. Value is perceived in their eyes only. This value can be expressed in many ways, such as reducing waste, increasing revenues, restoring good health, saving time, improving skills, having fun, etc. The customer weighs the benefit of the CVP against the cost and in comparison to other options. Few solutions are desired at any cost.

Five Questions for Every Company

In the pursuit of loyal customers across borders, strive to understand the answers to these five questions: 

• To what extent are we important to the customer?
• What does the customer want from us?
• How do we disappoint the customer?
• How can we improve the customer’s perception of us?
• What can we do for the customer that others can’t?

Building loyal customers across borders is much like building loyal customers at home. It requires understanding what they value most and then designing and delivering a CVP that gives them what they value. 

 Joseph A. Bockerstette is the partner at Business Enterprise Mapping.