Creating a customer-centric culture takes an internal commitment. It is more than just a philosophy or a marketing strategy; it is a mindset and an identity that all employees should embrace.
Companies whose customers are their main focus experience increased profit and gain a competitive advantage. But creating such a culture is more challenging than you might think.
1. Focus on the Customer
Keeping a customer-centric culture means that all of your team members are aware of what customers need. This can be done by collecting feedback from your customers and centralizing it in a useful way. This will allow everyone from the marketing department to the product development department to have access to the information and make decisions that align with customer needs.
For example, if you see a lot of customers asking for help with a specific feature, your team can create a series of “how-to” videos and include them in app download confirmation emails, newsletters or in-app messages. This will allow customers to get instant help and reduce their stress levels.
The goal is to build a relationship with your customer that helps them achieve their goals in the context of their job or personal life. This will lead to happy and loyal customers who will stick with your company over time. It will also increase brand advocacy for your business as they recommend it to friends and colleagues.
2. Focus on the Employees
Whether it’s your development team coding an online interface or the marketing team crafting words for your website, every employee should have the customer at the center of their work. This means that they should always ask themselves: How will this impact the customer? This is the foundation of a truly customer-centric culture.
To support your employees in this endeavor, provide them with the tools that they need to succeed. A robust customer relationship management system, for example, can help you centralize helpful customer data, as well as automate reminders to reach out to customers with personalized messages.
Moreover, you can also incentivize your employees by focusing on boosting employee happiness in the workplace. When employees are happy, they tend to be more attentive and focused on customer needs. A good way to do this is by identifying the factors that drive employee satisfaction, such as vigor (high levels of mental resilience and energy) and significance (a sense of meaning and purpose). By encouraging these factors, you can create a more meaningful workplace for your employees.
3. Focus on the Technology
Using customer feedback to create products and services that meet your customers’ needs is an important part of being customer-centric. This can be done in many ways, including surveys, emails, chat, message boards, or even face-to-face meetings.
Empathy is a key element of being customer-centric. By taking the time to understand and respect a customer’s feelings and motivations, you can offer them a better experience. This can lead to increased retention rates, higher profits, and an overall more successful business.
However, it’s important to remember that being customer-centric is not something that can be measured directly. Instead, it’s a mindset that should be ingrained in your company culture and can be reflected by the way your employees interact with their customers. By linking employee culture to customer outcomes, you can start to see if your customer-centric initiatives are paying off. This will help to keep your teams motivated and provide a clearer picture of how customer-centric decisions are impacting the company’s bottom line.
4. Focus on the Process
The best customer centric companies do more than just collect feedback, they use it to drive change. They make sure employees have the tools and resources they need to be successful. This includes giving them a chance to communicate with customers via phone, email, social media or website chat.
Then, they share that feedback with the entire organization. This makes everyone accountable for improving the experience. It also helps ensure that the changes are effective.
Another way to measure a company’s customer centricity is by measuring the number of return clients it has. By tracking this data, it’s possible to see that customer focus is helping to improve customer loyalty and retention.
Customer centricity isn’t something that can be achieved overnight. It takes time and commitment to implement. However, in the long run, it will yield positive results for the business. This includes a higher profit margin than those who aren’t customer-focused. This is because customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those that aren’t.