A complete guide to becoming a customer-centric business

If we look at the working pattern of all top companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon, we see one thing in common. Yes, these companies create products and services that the customers embrace. So, it means the real secret behind success is getting customer attention. For instance, Amazon does this by delivering on time. Google becomes a customer-centric business by creating a worldwide popular search engine. So, in this digital age now, the need for a customer-centric company is more than anything. There are many methods like social media platforms, Google reviews, or publishing mediums that customers can use to show disappointment. It means businesses don’t have any other solution than becoming customer-centric. 

What is a customer-centric business? Break down of the definition:

Organizations use many terms, strategies, and techniques to grab customer attention. But by the approach customer-centric, we mean a situation when an organization tries to see things from the customer’s perspective. A customer should be the primary focus of an organization. So, if you have strong relationships with customers, it helps bring more leads and buyers. 

“An organization is customer-centric when the primary goal is to create excellent experiences.”

However, providing a good experience involves marketing, sales, product development, and support. So, if a customer is on the right track, it helps build loyalty satisfaction and bring more customers. Ultimately, everything proves good for the success of the business. 

Importance of customer-centricity: 

Customer-centricity is an ability to understand customers’ situations, perspectives, and expectations. It means the business decisions should be aligned with the customer demands. If you want to build a digital-native culture, then focus on the following things: 

Besides, customer-centricity plays a crucial role in improving businesses’ financial position. Here are stats that prove the point with exact figures: 

• 7/10 customers of the USA say that they like to spend money on those businesses that have good service. 
• A customer-centric business improves the retention rate up to 5%, bringing 25% more profit. 
• It’s 25 times harder to bring a new customer than retaining the old ones. 

17% of people like to spend on excellent customer service businesses. In addition to this, improved ROI is another plus point that instigates to pay attention here. 

Steps to become a customer-centric business:

According to the CMO Council, 14% of marketers believe customer-centricity is the key to success. But it doesn’t happen overnight and takes time and effort to meet customers’ unique needs. We can say it involves many challenges of becoming a customer-centric business. But you can ease the way by following these steps: 

Believe in customer-centricity: 

The first and foremost thing is to believe in a customer-centric approach. It’s vital in all fields whether you are self-employed, businessperson or following a workation lifestyle. In the Workation pattern, an individual chooses to work irrespective of boundaries. For instance, you can even work from home or sit in a staycation. It’s a combination of work and leisure time. However, by believing in customer-centricity, you would be able to make decisions after thinking about customers’ needs, wants and behaviors. Above all, you need a front-line staff that has empathy for customers. In addition to this, customer-centric decisions are approved from the top; that’s why owners & executive level positions play a crucial role. Most importantly, don’t forget to make decisions based on analytics and numbers. 

Collect customer’s feedback: 

After dealing with the planning part, the next step is to see what customers think about the business. The customer-centricity based on the feedback that’s why you can’t miss this step to know where you are standing. In this digital world, an organization can use the following ways to take the feedback: 

If things are overwhelming, all departments can arrange communication channels to make it easy. But the business should remain proactive towards the feedback and always research before acting. 

Hire excellent customer service: 

After getting the feedback, the next approach is to hire a team that can handle people efficiently. We all know that the customer support team is behind the company’s growth. Moreover, the support team is closest to the customers, and high authorities will make decisions based on that information. Thus, while hiring a team, focus on the following points: 

• Excellent people who can talk pleasantly with customers 
• Treat support team as empowered and professional individuals 
• Pay these agents more 
• Train them so they can measure customer’s happiness or anger 

Apart from this, teach your team to initiate a good conversation with customers. In this way, people will stay happy, and overall, it improves the customer experience. 

Personalize the customer experience: 

Looking at the stats, around 68% of customers are annoyed when the support team transfers their call to someone else. It happens when an organization hires less staff than it needs. So, the company can solve this problem by automating procedures. Many technologies like real paystub makers and customer relationship management make things effortless. The CRM lets you store all employee-related data in a central hub. According to the experts: 

“77% of people prefer to pay for a brand that provides personalized experience and service.”

So, it’s a wise decision to involve technology because, in this way, you can offer personalized experiences. Moreover, if a customer leaves any feedback, don’t wait and immediately act upon it. 

Top behaviors for customer-centric businesses:

The main aim of the customer-centric approach is to transform the journey. Here are seven top behaviors that matter the most during the whole process. So, try to include these in strategy building: 

• Understand the relationship between customer and buyer 
• Teach yourself the difference between data and literacy 
• Give priority to dynamics 
• Keep an eye on customer’s journey 
• Optimize the customer experience by offering services & guidelines 
• Do cross-functional collaboration 
• Make value-based decisions 

Ultimately, everything works if you have a good team that can help to make things happen. In this way, you can create an experience for people, and as a result, they will be stuck with the brand. Usually, organizations focus more on sales than customers, and it’s a big hurdle in adopting a customer-centric approach. Many companies can’t do this because there are many challenges that you will have to face in achieving everything.