Harnessing customer knowledge
Featured in the Knowledge Management training manual
By Mike Bagshaw & Paul Phillips
Category: Management
Credit price: 3 download credits (Single user)
Virtually every manager would agree that more and better customer knowledge can bring economic benefits to a company. There are two aspects of customer knowledge. The first is the knowledge we have about our customers and how we collate and use that knowledge. The second is the knowledge they have about us of which we are as yet unaware. Where the first aspect is concerned, some companies are doing impressive things with customer data. A few even manage to turn some of it into knowledge. One difficulty is that customer knowledge is often widely dispersed around a company. Many different business functions have regular access to customers; they include marketing, sales, service, logistics, and even financial functions. (IT, of course doesn’t typically interact with customers, and this may also be part of the problem.) Each function usually has its own interests regarding customer information, its own way of recording what it learns and, perhaps, even its own customer information system. The disparate interests of departments make it difficult to pull together customer knowledge in one common format and place. Customer information and knowledge also inspire a high level of politics and passion. If knowledge is power, customer knowledge is high octane power; it is unlikely to be shared without reluctance. With the second aspect of knowledge, organisations rarely take the simple step of asking customers what they need. We assume we know what they want. This training activity helps with both kinds of customer knowledge.
You start by emphasising the importance of customer capital, and then run an exercise on what the group knows about their customers. This is followed by a group brainstorm on how to learn more. This leads on to an exercise where the participants work in small groups to discover tacit and explicit customer knowledge. The exercise is discussed with reference to a customer knowledge model. You go on to conduct a further group brainstorm on how to innovate with customers and then run a final exercise where participants are asked to define the key ingredients of an effective customer knowledge management process.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to provide a framework and process for capturing valuable customer knowledge.
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 12 |
| Typical Duration: | 02:05:00 |
| No of Pages: | 17 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers on customer service and sales and marketing programmes. It is also a useful way of introducing staff who are not working directly with customers or clients to a customer perspective.
Download the training activity, Harnessing customer knowledge as featured in the Fenman training manual; Knowledge Management