Consumer-centricity is prioritizing and placing your customer at the center of all you do.
A customer-centric approach to business focuses on providing a great customer experience both before and after the transaction to increase repeat business, customer loyalty, business growth, and success.
You could think, “That’ll be easy.” “That’s something I’m capable of.” Is it really that simple?
What does it mean to be customer-centric?
Customer centricity is centering every area of your business — from marketing and sales to product development and support — on the demands and interests of your customers, rather than short-term corporate objectives.
According to Gartner, “Customer centricity is the ability of people in an organization to understand customers’ situations, perceptions, and expectations. Customer centricity demands that the customer is the focal point of all decisions related to delivering products, services, and experiences to create customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.”
Customer-centric businesses work to understand their customers and act on that knowledge by cultivating a culture that allows employees to make the best decisions for both the customer and the company at the same time. They consider the impact of each business decision, process change, and consumer touchpoint on the overall experience.
Overall, customer-centricity is a strategy as well as a culture. To be acknowledged by the final decision maker: the customer, it must be ingrained in an organization. Bigger retention rates, more recommendations, higher price premiums, and ultimately more income are all benefits of successful organizations.
3 reasons why customer-centricity is valuable for your business
- Customer feedback gives valuable insights
Getting feedback from purchasers is critical for the professional who is actually in business to deliver value to his customers.
Feedback not only allows businesses to improve their product or service but also informs them of what they’re doing well. If a firm provides such value to its clients, it not only increases earnings for the company, it also allows the company to develop through word of mouth.
- When a consumer is happy, they will freely spread the news about your company.
People love to share their experiences with the world in today’s modern technology environment, and this is truer than ever. They create TikTok videos and share their product reviews or even make vlogs and upload them and YouTube.
- Customer acquisition is good, but customer retention is better
Repeat buyers are the lifeblood of any business, providing a predictable forecast of how the company will perform year after year.
How To Become Customer Centric
1. Invest in Customer Service
Customers want businesses to communicate with them and respond quickly across all platforms.
The customer support team is always the most trusted asset of any firm when it comes to engagement and answering concerns.
Building a customer-centric business necessitates investing time and resources in your support team so that they aren’t continually trying to clear a queue. This entails setting priorities:
- Recruiting exceptional people.
- Providing a good company and team culture, motivation, communication, training, and growth
- Instead of assessing first response time, measure customer happiness or engagement effort.
These suggestions will allow your support team to have more in-depth and proactive dialogues with your consumers.
Customer service is simply one aspect of the whole customer experience, but it is a location where your company values are displayed to your consumers directly.
2. Anticipate Customer Needs
Knowing what your consumers want is another important criterion for creating a customer-centric business.
Miriana Taflaga, Principle Experience Design from Symplicit said, “If you are actually open to what your customers really want, you’ll save yourself a lot of heartaches and time, and money, and effort.”
That’s true! And you can actually anticipate their needs by conducting tests and surveys, or by gathering insights from social networks.
The more you observe and gather insights and data from your customers, the more you’ll learn about their preferences and dislikes, which is essential for generating solutions that meet or surpass their expectations.
3. Collect Customer Feedback
Reinforcing our thoughts in number 2, yes we do need to collect customer feedback!
There are numerous opportunities for gathering input in today’s digital world. These platforms will make it easier for you to communicate with your consumers frequently and regularly in order to build a strong, customer-centric organization.
Consumers can assist you in creating a product that other customers enjoy. A really customer-centric organization would make use of the reality that their customers often know what they want, even if they can’t lead your product toward innovation on their own.
Here are a few of the ways you can communicate with your customers:
- Online survey tools
- Establishing user groups
- Monthly webinars or forums
- Provide incentivization for feedback
Being customer-centric requires you to listen to your customers!
4. Evolve with Your Customers
Customer-centricity is a continuous process.
Your service or product will evolve over time if you truly care about the customer. Future trend analysis and post-purchase surveys can assist you in figuring out where the market is going and how impending developments will affect consumers’ purchasing decisions.
5. Aim to Build Trust
Customer-centric businesses all have one thing in common: they place a premium on earning their consumers’ confidence.
It is difficult to obtain and even easier to lose. Because most customers believe you exist solely to sell items and make money, cultivating long-term relationships can be difficult.
Be easily accessible. Look for strategies to guarantee your employees or team are available at the proper times and have the right technologies and training to build confidence with your buyers.
Customers who contact your support representatives with a problem are putting their faith in your staff to assist them. A favorable connection can go a long way toward building a strong, long-term relationship.
Bottomline
Customer-centricity is the most certain way for a company to expand quickly, and increase sales, and profit. You also earn more money and have happier employees, and loyal consumers. The list might go on forever. This gives you an advantage over your competitors, especially those that aren’t customer-centric.
Customers will be loyal to companies who are loyal to their customers. More than half of consumers say they go out of their way to buy from their favorite companies, which is no minor feat.
It takes time and works to become a customer-centric company, but the effort is well worth it in the end.
Putting your clients first allows you to create better products and services that fulfill their needs. And if your consumers are satisfied, the bottom line is, that you and your team will be happy as well.
Learn more about how customer-centricity and human-centered design increase your likelihood of success in DevReady podcast episode 22 with Miriana Taflaga, Principle – Experience Design from Symplicit.
