Customer Profile Of An Organization - 1251 Words

Understanding Who the Customer Is â€Å"If we don’t have customers we don’t have a job† (Mcknight Booth, p. 26, 2010). In any organization the customer’s expectations must be known and met, and if at possible expectations should be exceeded. To be able to meet customer expectations, it is important to understand what the customer is expecting. When an organization takes the time to understand the customer’s needs, they will find their customers are unique and there is not a one size fits all approach to meeting customer’s needs. Customer Profile One of the first approaches to help understand who the customers are is building customer profiles. Customer profiles are used to describe a customer and are typically used in the marketing†¦show more content†¦The OEM segment is broken down into three segments, agriculture, construction and truck. The next level of segment breakdown is large, medium and small OEM customer, these segments are determined by the total sales the customer has with Eaton. In total the OEM customers consist of nine segments. When the customers are placed into segments, the expectations of those customer segments can be identified. Customer Expectations The expectations of what a customer needs from a supplier needs to be established in the beginning of the relationship building phase. The beginning of the relationship is critical to the success of the supplier with the customer. When establishing the expectations the customer wants from a supplier, the supplier is also presenting what they can do (LaWell, 2010). It is important to be open with the customer if their needs cannot be met, explaining why it needs cannot be meet. When clear expectations are set in the beginning, there is less room for customer dissatisfaction. Delivery Expectation Studies have shown customers expect high on time delivery, however the perceived delivery performance is low (Mattsson, 2004; Forslund Jonsson, 2007). One reason for the disparity in expectation versus perception is the way the delivery performance is measured. Eaton has developed their own way to measure on time delivery performance, the measurement is not