Customer RelationshipsEstimated Reading Time: just 2 min

Customer Relationships is a block of Business Model Canvas that refers to the relationship a company establishes with specific Customer Segments.

Some questions that are useful to understand the content of this block are
– Which relations has the company established with customers?
– How costly are them?
– How are they integrated with the rest of the business model?
– What type of relationship does each customer segment expect the company to establish?

Some examples of Customer Relationships are:

– Transactional (there is no real relationship, the company interacts with the customer on a transactional basis)

– Long-Term (a deep relationship is established, the company interacts with the customer on a recurring basis)

– Personal Assistance (based on human interaction, the customer can communicate with a real customer representative to get help during the sales process or after the purchase is complete and it may happen onsite at the point of sale, through call centers, by e-mail, or through other means)

– Dedicated Personal Assistance (it involves dedicating a customer representative specifically to an individual client, it represents the deepest and most intimate type of relationship and normally develops over a long period of time)

– Self-Service (a company maintains no direct relationship with customers and it provides all the necessary means for customers to help themselves)

– Automated Services (they mix a more sophisticated form of customer self-service with automated processes that can recognize individual customers and their characteristics, and offer information related to orders or transactions)

– Communities (utilized to become more involved with customers/prospects and to facilitate connections between community members, online communities allow users to exchange knowledge/solve each other’s problems and help companies better understand their customers)

– Co-Creation (this approach goes beyond the traditional customer-vendor relationship to co-create value with customers and it is about engaging customers to assist with the design of new and innovative products)

A very useful way to model Customer Relationships is using a Funnel.

A.A.A.R.R.R. FUNNEL AND VIRAL LOOP

A Viral Loop is the result of a positive customer experience while interacting with the company’s Value Proposition. More precisely if a customer is happy with a product or service, he/she might be so excited that he/she wants to share with others his/her experience as well as news and info about the company’s products or services.

A Viral Loop creates quick and cost-effective Brand Recognition.

A helpful tool for creating a Viral Loop is the A.A.A.R.R.R. Funnel also known as Pirate Funnel.

The funnel models the Consumer Relationships in 6 phases:
– Awareness
– Acquisition
– Activation
– Retention
– Revenue
– Referral

Each of these phases is managed through a metric that is called The Only Metric That Matters.

Learn more about the A.A.A.R.R.R. Funnel following this link.