Customer centricity requires the customer to be the focal point of ALL decisions related to delivering products, services and experiences for an organization. But why is it necessary to include customers to this extent in your planning and strategy development? You know your business, your industry, your competitors, right?
Let’s consider how a customer-centric approach can successfully drive your planning and strategy process and ultimately your growth.
A customer-driven company is one that focuses on customer wants and needs when developing its business strategies, products, and goals. If done right, customer centricity has huge business value. Looking at your company through your customers’ eyes can provide a very different perspective from what you see, experience and believe to be true vs. your customers’ perceptions. Remember, customer perception is reality.
Frequently gathering feedback from your customer experiences, needs, and expectations is the key. Integrating the insights throughout each segment of the business such as operations, development, marketing and sales will enable you to prioritize the needs of your customer and improve their experiences along with your sustainability and growth.
Consider what you can learn from these three critical customer segments:
New Customers
Ensure that your customers have a successful set-up and onboarding. Identify obstacles, inconsistencies, and communication issues early on. Eliminating these issues will result in a smooth, easy process for your customer that will instill confidence in your new relationship. Don’t stop working once the sale is made.
Current Customers
Expectations are created in the minds of customers based upon their individual experiences, and what they have learned, combined with their pre-existing experience and knowledge. Gathering feedback from current customers to understand what these expectations are and working to meet or exceed these customer expectations, along with ensuring that customers are receiving the value they expected, will guarantee customer satisfaction and drive loyalty.
Lost Customers
Every organization loses customers. The reasons for losing customers can be as simple as pricing or as complex as business restructuring or organizational changes. Some customer losses are not preventable. Companies go out of business or are purchased, or the need for products or services change. But, a great many customer losses can be prevented. Businesses that understand why customers leave will understand how to keep others in the future.
This core concept of making your customers part of the solution and creating strategies for improvement and retention will create customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.
Consider these Customer Acceleration tips that will help you make more money from your customers and make them happier in the process! If you’d like some help with it, please reach out at (216-876-1165) I’m happy to help you get started.
