Customer centricity is a growing trend for businesses. More and more companies are realizing that to drive sales, the focus needs to be on the customer and not on the dollars they are bringing in. At Tulip Media Group, this is our priority. In fact, Complete Client Partner Dedication to the success of our Client-Partners is our number one core value.
To make something centric is to put it at the forefront. When a business is customer centric, it focuses its resources on enhancing the customer experience above all else. The company looks at the sales process from the customer’s point of view and considers their thoughts, feelings, and how to make the experience more enjoyable for them. Ultimately, this drives sales and builds customer relationships that last.
We encourage all of our Client-Partners to take a customer centric approach in their organizations because we know it works. Your customers are everything to your business. Without them, you wouldn’t have any revenues. You also rely on your customers to bring in new business by spreading the word about your organization. Because of these things, it only makes sense for the customer to be the focal point of your business model.
Customer loyalty and high rates of retention are the primary objectives of a customer-centric organization. It has been well documented that customer retention is more profitable than customer acquisition, with a five percent increase in customer retention yielding a 25 to 95% increase in profits. In fact, customer centric companies are up to 60% more profitable than those that are not.
Being customer centric does not mean focusing on every customer. Part of an effective customer-centric approach is analyzing your customer base and knowing who is a high-quality customer and who is not. You can do this by using customer data to create segments, each with a different marketing strategy. Naturally, you should direct more resources towards those customers with a high rate of return in both sales and the business they refer to you.
To become customer centric, you need to start from the top. Your top management plays the most important role in driving change across the organization. They set the tone for how the rest of the company works, and their implementing a customer-centric culture is no exception. The management team should first determine key performance indicators for customer centricity, then develop strategies and policies for the rest of the organization to follow to meet these performance targets.
Key performance indicators might include your company’s net promoter score, customer lifetime duration, customer lifetime value, average journey completion time, customer effort score, task completion rate, escalation rate, customer churn rate, average resolution time, and daily complaint numbers. If you’re not sure how to measure these, ask us.
Once top management is on board and you’ve developed policies and determined key performance indicators, you will need to cultivate empathy across your organization. This applies to everyone and not just to customer-facing employees. Everyone contributes to the customer experience, so everyone needs to understand the selling process from the customer’s point of view.
Encourage employees to spend time going through customer calls and reviewing your customer persona. Explain to them how their work impacts the customer experience and organize regular team meetings where you share customer stories and what you’ve learned by interacting with them. This will keep everyone aligned with the customer-centric approach and bring back-end employees in sync with what’s happening on the front end.
When you hire new employees, assess their ability to empathize as part of the screening process. Those unable to express empathy are not likely a good fit for your new customer-centric organization.
Once you have an empathic culture, you need to shift the focus of the organization from sales to relationships. Sales are important, but they are driven by the relationships you develop with your customers. The problem with focusing on sales is that figures are objective targets that pay no mind to emotions and feelings. Because your customers are human, you need to prioritize the relationship you build with them and the way they regard your organization. When you focus on relationships with your customers, sales follow because your customers feel seen and understood and this makes them want to buy from you.
Empower employees to go the extra mile for your customers and provide them with the tools they need to do so. Encourage them to understand the bigger picture and why they are doing what they’re doing and reward them for their efforts. Customers will pick up on it when employees are aligned with customer-centric initiatives and have been given the free will to enhance their experience.
As a customer-centric organization, you need to actively collect customer feedback about their experience and act on it. Many organizations collect feedback, but surprisingly few take action. Fifty-two percent of people believe companies need to take action on the feedback provided by customers, and not making use of this feedback is one of the main reasons companies are unable to succeed at customer centricity. When you receive feedback from customers, use these insights to influence your approach and to build new roadmaps for your processes going forward.
Customer centricity focuses on long-term initiatives. Developing relationships with your customers doesn’t happen overnight, and it will take time to see the results of your new processes. The good news is that these initiatives gain momentum over time. Once you begin seeing results, they will typically escalate because your retention will increase and more and more customers will be referring business to you.
Building a customer-centric culture is a team effort. It requires commitment from everyone in your organization to drive excellence in the customer experience. This is why, if you’re committed to doing business this way, you must shift your focus, cultivate empathy, and actively respond to your customer base.
When you develop a marketing strategy with Tulip Media, we’ll encourage you to try out all these initiatives because we want to see you succeed. Your success is our success. If this is something that you’re interested in, we encourage you to book a demo with us at TulipMediaGroup.com to learn more.
