Confidential Global B2B Technology Company :: Aerospace Business Unit

Approach

The client sought to understand key priorities for specific, VIP customers to optimize their sales and marketing strategies. noodle research conducted interviews with individuals from priority segment customers across different geographic regions (AMER, EMEA, APAC) to generate Voice of Customer (VoC) insights.

Outcome & Impact

Customers seek a light-touch supplier relationship where they don't have to engage constantly if promises are met ("The best supplier is the one you do not hear about"). The overall impact was defining the fundamental steps needed to restore customer faith and unlock future business opportunities. Key opportunities identified for the client included:

  • Prioritizing Operational Reliability: Success hinges on eliminating delivery delays and addressing issues impacting product quality, which involves triaging and addressing existing claims and backorders immediately.

  • Enhancing Proactive Communication: Providing timely and accurate data and proactive communication regarding order status, delivery dates, and pertinent organizational changes (like qualification changes or plant closures).

  • Streamlining Support: Customers desire a shared sense of urgency and clear escalation pathways to address problems quickly. Providing a dedicated point-person or global account manager was highly sought after by customers

  • Tailored Partnership: Implementing differentiated service offering packages or "roadmaps" for target VIP customers. Customers desire preferential treatment (e.g., exclusive products or better pricing) to reinforce their strategic importance.

Phase-wise Project Process Map

  • The initial phase of the project involved engaging with key internal stakeholders, as well as conducting a secondary research via a thorough review of relevant documents, in order to help the client better frame the challenges impacting them, identify key informants to interview, and design a research plan and discussion guide to elucidate actionable information for increasing the client's share of their niche market.

  • Primary research was conducted via hour-long, virtual in-depth interviews (IDIs) with key informants who had opted into participating in the research study. The subject matter of the project was extremely sensitive, making recruiting a significant challenge: over 1,000 individuals were contacted in order to achieve the ~20 interviews. These subject matter expert conversations helped develop a macro understanding of the client's industry, identified salient opportunities for increasing the client's market share, and elucidated emerging trends in the sector for further investigation and consideration.

  • Learnings from the primary and secondary research activities were synthesized into actionable insights that helped inform the development of design principles for improving the client's outreach and marketing activities in an effort to capitalize on existing and emerging market trends. These findings were presented to key client stakeholders from marketing, sales, and business development departments, aongst others.