Many companies often claim to be customer-centric, but a dive into how they run their business proves otherwise.
In this day and age of social media, the worst thing for any company is to be on the wrong side of its customers. On the flip side though, it is also the best thing to happen to companies, because, if you treat your customers well, they will become your biggest advocates on social media.
So, how do you become a more customer-centered company?
Run a business from a Customer perspective
The perception of your customer is the reality. No matter how well you think the business is from your perspective, remember that you are there for your customer. Thus, there should be a very small gap between a customer’s expectations of experience and their perception of actual experience.
Use customer feedback to bring the customer experience much closer to customer expectations. If not, you run the risk of creating a chasm between customer expectation and customer experience.
Make customers part of the solution
To become a customer-centric company, make your customers part of your solution-oriented process.
You can have them involved not just in giving feedback to the product or service, but also, in the design processes, about the kinds of services or products they would love and how they would love them, and so on.
Don’t make assumptions of what the customer would want before involving the customer.
Use data
Data is the best when it comes to identifying customer trends and most established companies keep the customer data across the enterprise, be it sales data, marketing data, digital data, and product and service data.
This data needs to be easily accessible across the company so that your employees can see the relationship between the company and the customer and work towards maintaining it or improving it.
Be innovative
The business environment and customer needs and cultures change rapidly in this tech age. Thus, as a company looking to maintain your customer base, loving the status quo will be your downfall.
Instead, be innovative. Continually experiment with ways in which you can delight your customers and attract new ones.
Such actions will engender a community around your company’s product or service, leading to high customer satisfaction and thus, business growth.
Remember, as a business, the reason you are a business is because of your customer and thus, you need to think of them at every step of the way.
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