Exploring Customer Relationships and Channels in the Business Model Canvas  

When you are defining your business model, you will need to pay special attention to customer relationships and channels. This is where you focus on how to deliver an outstanding experience to the customers and get them to do business with you. On the other hand, you will be focusing on all sorts of communication touchpoints that you have with your customers. 

Different categories of customer relationships  

• Personal assistance 

Personal assistance is all about the human communications that you have with your customers. It doesn’t always have to be face-to-face communications. Email, phone, and chat communications belong under this category as well. 

• Dedicated personal assistance 

Dedicated personal assistance is where you pay more attention to offering customer support. This is where you will be assigning a customer representative to deal with a customer, and to engage with the customer along with time. When you have a dedicated customer support representative working with a customer, you can develop trust and familiarity. The representative will also be able to understand the customer and offer a better overall service. 

• Automated services 

Automated services is where you offer customer support via automated processes. A chat bot can be considered as a perfect example for an automated services. These services are quite efficient. 

• Self-service 

Self-service is where you allow your customer to get assistance through self-help methods. The customers will be self-sufficient to use these channels and get answers to their questions. A self-care app is a perfect example for a self-service. 

• Co-creation  

Co-creation is where you get into a mutually beneficial relationship with different people. For example, some of the businesses would ask the customers to design new services and products. This will allow to deliver a better service or a product to the customers at the end of the day. 

• Communities  

This is where you will foster community creations in between the customers. You will be able to do these online. For example, you can learn more about the customer base and offer 24×7 assistance via an online community. 

• Different types of channels 

You will be able to use many different channels in order to get in touch with your customers. This is where you should figure out the most convenient and cost-effective channel to reach out to potential customers.  

You can categorize available channels into two different categories as your own channels and partner owned channels. On the other hand, you may also classify them as direct channels and indirect channels. Your Salesforce web sales would be a direct channel. On the other hand, your own stores and wholesale partner stores will belong to indirect channels. 

• Different phases in channels 

When it comes to channels, you can discover multiple phases. The first phase would be awareness. This is where you get a customer to be aware of the products or services you offer. Then you get into the evaluation phase, where you are assisting a customer to evaluate your unique value proposition. You will then be coming to the third stage, which is the purchase stage. You will be enabling the customers to buy the products or services you offer during this stage. 

The next stage would be the delivery stage. This is where you deliver the unique value proposition to the customers. Then you will be coming to the after-sales stage, where you offer additional support to the customers. 

Keep these different phase in mind and figure out the most effective method to communicate with your customers. You should ensure that you are locating a perfect balance in between different types of channels.  

 

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