Starting your NPS program by asking yourself who your customer is may seem like an oversimplification, but answers within an organization often vary widely. Accurate customer segmentation delivers great value.

Segmentation is grouping customers by attributes or behaviors that represent key distinctions. Understanding how a customer’s experience varies by segment across their journey with you enables you to better target high value customers for journey optimization. The approach you take will vary depending on whether you are B2B or B2C or B2B2C.

In B2B, the individual is a part of an account. Segmentation by account means looking for mutually exclusive data clusters which will enhance your data analytics, e.g. region, revenue tier, tenure, products purchased. As you define your key segmentation categories, we recommend that you not only consider how you currently view data, but how you would like to see data in the future. Additionally, ask yourself if the category is a true differentiator.

Before we move on to B2C, be reminded that there are a couple of instances where you may benefit by applying the behavioral segmentation typically seen with consumers to the individuals who make up the account. A common example of this is identifying the influence level of individuals within the account, e.g. C-level stakeholder, senior manager, decision maker, influencer, end user. In the case of a software company with a high volume of users, defining profiles or personas may yield great insights.

In B2C creating personas is a form of behavioral segmentation that works well as you are dealing with a large, homogenous universe. Personas are the human representation of a group of customers, a way of bringing a scenario to life using characters who typify a particular customer group. When thinking about customer journeys it can be helpful to look at what the journey with an insurance company would look like for John, who is 46, married with two children, technically savvy, enjoys cycling and eats healthy. Keep in mind that personas can overlap segmentation as outlined earlier, for instance customers in segment A can be like John or Mary another persona.

You may be asking; how do we define who is our customer in B2B2C. We recommend that you consider it to be the business, your economic buyer while keeping in mind the importance of the consumer experience and how it impacts your business customer.

Ultimately, we encourage you to think of segmentation as a tool to help develop your customer strategy. Which customers are the best targets for experience optimization to deliver financial and competitive gain for your business.

These foundational NPS practices are critical for understanding and improving the customer experience. Your insights will be limited by your data. Taking your customer strategy to the next level means you’ll need to radically expand the data you routinely analyze and include, going far beyond attitudinal data to operational metrics and data culled from customers’ daily experiences and interactions. To get there, download our guide, take our comprehensive training course, or read about the future of NPS.