In this article, we’ll look at how the Customer Value Alignment Cycle allows you to leverage the first-of-its-kind Customer Value SWOT analysis. Here’s a quick summary of the Customer Value Alignment Cycle.
Customer Value Alignment (CVA) is the process of closing the gap between what a business offers and the perceived value customers expect from that business. In other words, making up the difference between Perceived Benefits and Costs.
The CVA Cycle is how we operationalize this idea, performed in 3 steps:
- Track Value
– Worthix’s AI technology uses a conversation-based framework to explore all dimensions of value that lead to the conclusion of worth. It pinpoints perceived customer value and calculates its impact on business KPIs. - Find Actionability
– Blend conversations results with metadata, test hypotheses and find actionable opportunities. Worthix automatically looks for correlations between the conversation themes and your respondents’ metadata such as amount spent, age, gender, location, purchase, journey moment etc. Then it highlights business opportunities, customer profiles, and relevant segments so you can precisely act where you’re more likely to have success. - Co-create Innovation
– Worthix tells you which experiences should be improved and identifies opportunities for innovation. It then allows you to invite your customers to co-create solutions before you invest money and other resources
Traditional SWOT vs Customer Value SWOT
We needed a way to display Customer Value data in a way that was organized and easy to read. After testing out different charts and data visualizations, we eventually landed on the SWOT Analysis model. A SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning and management technique used by organizations to identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats related to business competition or project planning. It is presented as a square divided into four quadrants, each dedicated to an element of the SWOT. The main benefit is a quick visual overview of a company’s strategic position.
The problem is, the traditional SWOT has too many weaknesses to be reliable as a source of strategic input. As an exercise, we did a SWOT Analysis of the SWOT model itself (after all, who SWOTs the SWOTers?).
Notice how the Strengths and Opportunities are outnumbered by Weaknesses and Threats.
Traditional SWOT Analysis
| STRENGTHS | WEAKNESSES |
| · Good for brainstorming and strategic planning. · Can help identify problems in overall business plans or individual projects. | · Can only be used as an approximation of strategy, and lacks the ability to define specific action items for teams. · Vulnerable to subjectivity from internal biases and human interpretation. · Difficult to track continuously or at a large scale. · Conducted as a point-in-time study, so the results do not stay relevant for long. |
| OPPORTUNITIES | THREATS |
| · Uses a well-known and easily understood framework. · Can be used company-wide. | · Internal and subjective, which can lead to strategies being implemented without carefully considering customer perceptions. · Quantitative analysis carries more weight in strategic planning since it is more easily validated, at the cost of vital qualitative data essential to departments like Marketing. |
Advantages of the Customer Value SWOT
We saw the potential of the SWOT’s ability to relay key strategic insights simply and quickly. We found that when we based the inputs for the SWOT entirely on Voice of Customer (VoC) feedback, its subjectivity weakness was instantly solved, becoming a strength. Combine this with the Customer Value Alignment approach and an AI that does continuous analysis of VoC data, and the rest of the weaknesses start to disappear as well.
Let’s see what else changes when you add Customer Value to the SWOT Analysis:
Customer Value SWOT Analysis
| STRENGTHS | WEAKNESSES |
| · Good for brainstorming and strategic planning. · Can help identify problems in overall business plans or individual projects. + Provides specific action items for departments and teams that directly impact their operations, which would otherwise require separate planning and strategizing. + Can be performed continuously and at scale instead of as an ad-hoc, point-in-time study. + Able to track changes over time in each quadrant as they happen, so you can update strategies as customer perceptions change. | · · · |
| OPPORTUNITIES | THREATS |
| · Uses a well-known and easily understood framework that can be used company-wide. + Removes internal bias as a source of subjectivity from the results, since all inputs are 100% based on Voice-of-Customer feedback. + Offers qualitative insights that are invaluable for Marketing and Branding that can be gathered at the same speed as quantitative studies. | · · |
The Customer Value SWOT in action
Below is what the actual Customer Value SWOT looks like. Rather than a grid, we’ve organized Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats into a single bar that adds up to a total score, which is your Worthix (short for Worth Index).
The Worthix is the primary KPI that links the SWOT to Customer Value Alignment. In this case, it is 65 (out of 100). Your Worthix has a high correlation with company revenue and core KPIs. The higher this number, the better your Customer Value Alignment, and the healthier the company will be overall.
The strategic value of this score becomes apparent when we dive deeper into the results. Once we’ve gathered and analyzed the VoC feedback, we categorize it as follows, from the broadest category to the narrowest:
- Themes, based on the Marketing Mix’s 5 Ps Model, as explained in this article.
- Mediums, the vehicle through which a positive or negative perception is delivered.
- Perceptions, the customer’s stated perception of that vehicle and/or theme.
From the Customer Value SWOT Bar, you can see everything that is impacting customers and how exactly they perceive it. If you want to examine Weaknesses, you can go into further detail.
As you can see, within Themes are the 5 Ps, Product, People, Place, Price, and Promotion. If we look further into People, for instance, we can then see the Medium through which the customer perceives your business.
In this case, we chose Help Desk. From there, we can move into a specific Perception, such as Speed. Based on the size of the bar, Speed has a relatively high impact, second only to Quantity.
Themes do not change, but Mediums and Perceptions are taken 100% from Customer VoC, meaning these categories emerge and change organically to match customers’ ever-changing expectations.
The size of each of the bars, from the total SWOT all the way to Perceptions, is proportional to how much of an impact that category can have on your overall Worthix, which in turn has a direct impact on your overall success and revenue.
You can use this information to justify allocating resources to Speed, and you can also clearly see that you should probably invest at least that much in Quantity as well. Speed is also the specific action item that you can take to teams and say “Here, focus on improving Speed. If we do this, we can expect an increase of X in our Worthix, which will mean an ROI of Y”.
Not only can it show you what you need to improve internally, but it can also show you what effect competitors have on customers’ perception of you through the Competitive Landscape tracker, which is also represented in the SWOT bar.
All the information you need to succeed as a company, across every team, is simple to find in the Customer Value SWOT.
You can finally get every team united around one common Customer Value and bring actionable insights to your teams at the speed of change. The only thing left will be to get out in the real world and do whatever it is you do best.
