By Sallie Ann Burnett, East Regional Director, Alliance for Innovation
Customer Segmentation: How Knowing Your Customers Can Help You Serve Them Better
by Kate Graham, Manager – Corporate Initiatives, London, ON
As providers of public services, we tend to think that our services are for everyone. All citizens in our communities use water and garbage services. Everyone has access to libraries and parks, and an equal likelihood of requiring supports from emergency or community services.
However, the fact of the matter is that not every citizen uses every public service; and, people do not use public services in the same ways, for the same reasons, or with the same frequency. One citizen may use a suite of public services that is almost entirely different than those used by their neighbours. Even with services that are used by almost everyone in a community, such as water or garbage, the way people use those services and their motivations for doing so can be quite dissimilar. So, how can we know our customers – who is using our services, why, and in what ways? Customer segmentation is a tool to help service providers understand who they serve. By definition, customer segmentation is the process of dividing up a customer base into smaller groups of individuals that share common consumer traits and have similar preferences.
Read more in the September Alliance Newsletter.
Questions? Comments? Please reach out to me at saburnett@transformgov.org, or 800-777-2509.