Framework for Customer Segmentation Survey

Judith Taan

Hello everyone,

My name is Judy and have been lurking here for a bit.

It's been almost a month since we formed a Customer Success Operations team in our company and I am thrilled to discover this great community. It has been an eye-opener to read through the posts and I've gleaned valuable information. I'm writing to find out your thoughts about how to approach preparing questions for our Customer Segmentation Survey.

A little background on our company - we provide apps for companies in the building and construction industry to manage their site processes. We offer different solutions on a single platform and we want to create customer personas through the survey and also find out what our strengths/potential opportunities are. We plan to survey for the top 20% clients and the bottom 20% clients (in terms of adoption) to form the customer personas and from there create customer profiles with desired experiences.  I was thinking of asking questions related to their user experience in terms of product and engagement with our Implementation/Customer Success Teams. 

Have any of you done a similar exercise before? Do you have any suggestions on the survey framework and questions we should ask? Will you be able to share a template that has worked for your organisation - any ideas and resources will be amazing!

Thank you!

Ed Powers

Hello Judy, 

I work with clients on projects like this and segmentation typically boils down into three dimensions: 

• Market segment--clusters of customers pursuing common value, described by attributes such as industry, company lifecycle, size, etc.
• Persona--typical people at accounts who play a role in the decision process or in consuming the product (e.g. Engineer Erin, Marketing Marty, etc.)
• Tier--type of engagement that makes sense to these segments and personas and is practical for the provider, such as high-touch, light-touch, tech-touch

Typically your Marketing or Product function has already defined segments (and possibly personas), and since many of the same personas may be involved in a later renewal or expansion decision, it's usually practical to use the same definitions in post-sales. Personas are useful because value perception is role-dependent, i.e. an Economic buyer looks at the world much differently than a User. 

From your description, it appears you need to investigate who these people are and what they need, value, and expect from you, and determine improvement opportunities. Going directly to customers to get the facts is a great way to start. I suggest drafting segments and personas based on what your company already knows, and then conducting a qualitative (rather than a quantitative) study as a first step. For example, reach out to at least 10 of each in those top and bottom 20% groups and ask open-ended questions about their experience. You will see some patterns in the contrast. Then, if necessary, follow up with a quantitative survey to ascertain %'s, paying attention to ensuring your sample is sufficiently large and representative of the population(s) of interest. Use proper statistical methods to ensure you draw valid conclusions from the data. Folks like @Anita Toth do qualitative surveys for a living, and I can help on the quantitative side.

Hope that helps,

Ed

Anita Toth

Congrats on your first post @Judy Taan. ?  Thanks for the shoutout @Ed Powers.  As Ed mentioned, you'll want to segment based on different dimensions but first you'll need a good understanding of who your customers currently are, what they want to achieve and what they need to get there.

In addition to the surveys, adding in a few customer interviews will do wonders for getting this information quickly and thoroughly. The interviews help clarify and speed up the process of figuring out your different segments.

Certainly exciting stuff -- figuring out your segments, creating surveys and building your CS team. 

Happy to chat with you further about building out your surveys and segments so they serve you and your team well.

Judith Taan

Hello @Ed Powers, 

Thank you for your response, it has given me the assurance that I am on the right path. And yes, I agree that it makes sense to use the same personas used by our Product and Marketing teams. 

I'll work on a draft of a survey and reach out to you for feedback. 

Thanks!

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Judy Taan
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-16-2020 11:37
From: Ed Powers
Subject: Framework for Customer Segmentation Survey

Hello Judy, 

I work with clients on projects like this and segmentation typically boils down into three dimensions: 

• Market segment--clusters of customers pursuing common value, described by attributes such as industry, company lifecycle, size, etc.
• Persona--typical people at accounts who play a role in the decision process or in consuming the product (e.g. Engineer Erin, Marketing Marty, etc.)
• Tier--type of engagement that makes sense to these segments and personas and is practical for the provider, such as high-touch, light-touch, tech-touch

Typically your Marketing or Product function has already defined segments (and possibly personas), and since many of the same personas may be involved in a later renewal or expansion decision, it's usually practical to use the same definitions in post-sales. Personas are useful because value perception is role-dependent, i.e. an Economic buyer looks at the world much differently than a User. 

From your description, it appears you need to investigate who these people are and what they need, value, and expect from you, and determine improvement opportunities. Going directly to customers to get the facts is a great way to start. I suggest drafting segments and personas based on what your company already knows, and then conducting a qualitative (rather than a quantitative) study as a first step. For example, reach out to at least 10 of each in those top and bottom 20% groups and ask open-ended questions about their experience. You will see some patterns in the contrast. Then, if necessary, follow up with a quantitative survey to ascertain %'s, paying attention to ensuring your sample is sufficiently large and representative of the population(s) of interest. Use proper statistical methods to ensure you draw valid conclusions from the data. Folks like @Anita Toth do qualitative surveys for a living, and I can help on the quantitative side.

Hope that helps,

Ed

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Ed Powers
Consultant
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-13-2020 09:02
From: Judy Taan
Subject: Framework for Customer Segmentation Survey

Hello everyone,

My name is Judy and have been lurking here for a bit.

It's been almost a month since we formed a Customer Success Operations team in our company and I am thrilled to discover this great community. It has been an eye-opener to read through the posts and I've gleaned valuable information. I'm writing to find out your thoughts about how to approach preparing questions for our Customer Segmentation Survey.

A little background on our company - we provide apps for companies in the building and construction industry to manage their site processes. We offer different solutions on a single platform and we want to create customer personas through the survey and also find out what our strengths/potential opportunities are. We plan to survey for the top 20% clients and the bottom 20% clients (in terms of adoption) to form the customer personas and from there create customer profiles with desired experiences.  I was thinking of asking questions related to their user experience in terms of product and engagement with our Implementation/Customer Success Teams. 

Have any of you done a similar exercise before? Do you have any suggestions on the survey framework and questions we should ask? Will you be able to share a template that has worked for your organisation - any ideas and resources will be amazing!

Thank you!


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Judy Taan

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Judith Taan

Hello @Anita Toth,

Did not think about conducting interviews alongside the surveys, thank you for the suggestion. I will craft out qualitative questions and am hoping to get your advice from it. 

Thank you!

Anita Toth

@Judy Taan -- When you're done with the interview and survey questions, I'm happy to look over them. I can also offer some suggestions on execution that will make it easier to understand the data once it's collected.