7 Ways to Build a Customer-Centric Culture
Is your organization sufficiently customer-centric? Spoiler alert: If you stop and think about what this means, the answer is probably no.
Welcome to Customer Centricity , Customer Experience, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Happiness, and a strong focus on customer-centric practices designed to differentiate the most successful companies from their competitors.
Why do we write about a \"customer-centric culture\"? Because it\'s not just a trend; prioritizing a customer-centric approach has been proven to improve profits.
Let\'s revisit the question that opened this article: Is your organization sufficiently customer-centric? If you\'re not sure, here are a dozen tips and strategies to help you stay ahead of trends and, most importantly, ahead of your competition.
1. Prioritize customer empathy
The concept of \"empathy\" is at the heart of the customer-centric philosophy. It may sound like a buzzword in the cold business world, but the ability to truly understand and respect the feelings and motivations of others is actually a game-changing business advantage.
Harvard Business Review encourages companies to \"implement customer empathy,\" defining it as follows: \"Essentially, customer empathy is the ability to identify a customer\'s emotional need, understand the reasons behind that need, and respond effectively and appropriately. This Very rare. According to PwC , only 38% of U.S. consumers say the employees they interact with understand their needs.”
2. Do some homework for your clients
Building a customer-centric culture requires a deep understanding of your customers that goes well beyond the amount they\'ve spent with you over the past year. Doing a little extra homework about customers, their industry, and their competition can yield valuable business intelligence.
There are many potential benefits when your team starts to understand customers better than your competitors. When it comes to your ongoing interactions with your customers, demonstrating their advanced knowledge of their operations and the business units they run sends the message that you care enough and dig deep as part of your commitment to helping them succeed .
Additionally, this knowledge can help your team find ways to deliver exceptional \"beyond\" service and add value to every encounter. Creatively solving problems or identifying potential barriers to customer success helps lay the foundation for mutually beneficial long-term customer relationships.
3. Meet with clients in person
While reducing service visits and other on-site contact with customers is one way to cut expenses, spending less time with customers is not the best way to take your relationship to the next level. Instead, focus on viewing each customer visit as an opportunity to listen, learn, provide value and deepen relationships.
Consider this: Service agents typically have very close, high-trust relationships with their customers, interacting with them about 75 times a month. In an organization with 100 technical service and support staff, there are 7,500 opportunities to add value to customers every month. This will result in better business outcomes for your clients and more revenue and profit for your organization.
4. Collect customer feedback
The core of the customer-centric case is that customer feedback is valuable data that you can use to make your business more successful.
Traditional and newer methods include surveys, phone calls, emails, message boards, social media, text messages and live chat. But perhaps the most valuable customer feedback occurs in the enhanced dialogue between the supplier/supplier and the customer.
5. Strive to understand the “big picture” of each client
When you go the extra mile to gain a deeper understanding of your customers\' most important business needs and goals (their \"big picture\"), you improve your ability to help them meet those needs and achieve those goals.
The benefit of emphasizing this aspect of customer focus is that your key team members will be better able to add value to your customers by connecting technical and product knowledge with the new insights that matter most to each customer.
As an organization, what do your customers want to achieve? cut costs? increase productivity? Increase growth? become more competitive? Maybe even all of the above. The point is, if you understand what your customers are trying to achieve, you\'ll be better able to find ways to help in the areas that matter most to them. Which customers don\'t like a vendor focused on helping them achieve greater business outcomes?
6. Knowing Your Employee Culture Also Has Benefits
Another benefit of a customer-centric approach to business is that it can also have an extremely positive impact on your own internal employee culture.
For example, consider the potential morale boost that could arise when your client-facing employees are not only called upon to solve problems, but are relied upon and valued for their ability to use their new relationship-building skills to grow into trusted advisor roles.
7. Invest in customer-centric training
To successfully transition to a customer-centric business culture, you need to consider investing heavily in employee training to equip your key team members with a higher level of customer relationship skills.
We have a long history of delivering customized training programs designed to help you position your company as a trusted partner supplier, continually demonstrating to customers that you are committed to helping them achieve their most important business goals and in new opportunities Achieving Success Horizon.
