Credential in Customer Equity

In today’s business climate, gaining and sustaining profitability is a battle for customer mindshare.

Competing for market share has turned into a competition to offer more for less. Winning mindshare is about customers, their desires and their emotions. It requires new perspectives, new strategies, and new tactics for implementation. It takes insights into today’s customers, what they value, and how they make decisions. Ultimately, it is about delivering engaging customer experiences that stimulate desire and commitment.

To deliver engaging customer experiences, businesses must realign their practices to match the mission. Getting employees engaged in the process is critical to this realignment as employees have a crucial role in the customer experience.

The Customer Equity Initiative is designed to help companies address these challenges.

The CEi Credential program provides a comprehensive understanding of the key principles involved in building customer equity. It covers three interdependent components: the psychology of the customer experience, engaging the employees in the mission, and, aligning corporate strategies.

Completion of the Credential Program will insure that the individual has the knowledge, strategies and methodologies to implement customer equity building programs. Upon completion of the program graduates will have a strategic plan for building customer equity in their business or industry. The Credential formally signifies an individual’s qualification to lead customer equity building initiatives.
Requirements

Credential Level I

  • Three CEi workshops:
    • Winning Customer Mindshare
    • Engaged Employees
    • Aligning Corporate Strategies
  • CEi Addicted Customer Bootcamp

Credential Level II

  • CEi Strategic Planning Project
  • CEi Future of Marketing Summit
CEi Associate Status

Individuals who complete the Credential in Customer Equity Program (Level I) are eligible for Associate Status in the Customer Equity Initiative. Associate status bestows the following benefits:
  • Priority access to all CEi events
  • Unlimited access to CEi papers and information (annual fee)
  • Invitation to exclusive CEi events
  • Access to a rich network of like-minded, forward-thinking business leaders from diverse industries around the globe
  • Opportunity to serve as a committee member on Strategic Planning Projects
Course Descriptions
Winning Customer Mindshare Workshops
This workshop provides the insights and strategies that will enable companies to escape price competition while gaining profitable, committed customers.  It is tough to beat the giants of any industry on price. This workshop shows you how to create competitive differentiation by winning customer mindshare. This entails delivering the emotionally and psychologically gratifying experiences customers’ value.

This half-day workshop and the accompanying workbook will systematically take you through key winning mindshare concepts. In each case the concept will be discussed and shown how it is successfully being put into action. A series of interactive exercise will help you recognize the concept in your own experiences and then assist you in applying the concept to your business.
Engaged Employees Workshops

Gallup Research has shown that 75-90% of employees are less than fully engaged in their job. This means that while they are physically present, they are at least partially psychologically absent. This disengagement erodes company profits and competitiveness and it has a dramatic impact on a company’s ability to deliver the type of customer experience that they value and reward with loyalty. Customers are up to 20 times more likely return to a business if they perceive employees to be engaged.

This half-day workshop and accompanying workbook systematically takes you through key principles for increasing the engagement level of employees. In each case the concept will be discussed and shown how it is successfully being put into action. A series of interactive exercise will help you recognize the concept in your own experiences and then assist you in applying the concept to your business or industry.

Aligning Corporate Strategies
Value to today’s customer lies in the experience they derive from a product, not the product per se. Delivering this value to customers requires a realignment of business practices and processes.

These days, customers live in a world of product abundance and choice. Companies only selling products will increasingly find themselves in commodity markets competing on price.

This workshop is design to help companies realign their business practices to enable experiences that deliver what customers value and build customer equity for the company.

Addicted Customer Bootcamp
This three day bootcamp systematically works through the principles discussed in John Todor, Ph.D.s new book Addicted Customers: How to Get Them Hooked on Your Company. It covers many of the principles covered in the Winning Customer Mindshare and Engaged Employee workshop but it does so in much more depth. In addition it guides participants in building a plan of action that will enable their company to quickly seize short-term benefits and most importantly provide an actionable framework for gaining sustainable results.

Strategic Planning Project
The Strategic Planning Project is an opportunity for individuals to take the insights and directions they develop in the Bootcamp and develop them into a fully actionable plan. The focus of the project might be an assessment of a company’s current customer equity profile, the development of an experiential marketing event or the strategic plan for a product line or overall company initiative. Participants work under the guidance of two experience senior CEi advisors. Strategic Planning Projects are offered on a quarterly basis and must be completed with in a three-month period.

The Future of Marketing Summits

Each Summit assembles a small group of thought leaders speak to a seminal issue facing marketing today. These are the big picture issues that challenge traditional practices and assumptions. They bring into focus the impact of change on customers, business dynamics and technology. Each speaker will define the issue, propose solutions and engage participants in roundtable discussion of the implications, challenges, opportunities and strategies. Join other forward thinking business and marketing leaders in a lively discussion - leave with a clearer view of the new marketing imperatives.

Credential program participants will be expected to serve as roundtable facilitators.