Many of today’s organizations have recognized that customer centricity is not only a feel-good, altruistic mantra – it is more of a core business requirement, especially in this age where customer decisions are heavily influenced by how a company treated them. Excellent customer experience can become your key to stay ahead of the competition, improve efficiency, grow revenue, drive performance, and ultimately, lead to sustainable profitability.
However, transforming your business to become entirely customer-centric is not an easy task. Even with the most advanced technology and intensive strategies at your disposal, a company cannot achieve real transformation if it lacks the culture that will support its transition. It is not as simple as replacing a few pieces of equipment or instilling new rules in the workplace – it is a multi-faceted journey that extends for a long time and requires the full involvement of everyone.
Here are some tips that can help you embed a culture of customer centricity in your company today onwards.
1. Instil the desire to build a customer-centric culture
Even before your business can practice customer centricity, it should be imperative that the whole team wants to carry this philosophy out, as it requires more than just a shift in the way people do their tasks or the steps in the process they follow. Customer centricity is a change in attitude and perception towards customer issues and satisfaction, and if people are not sold on the idea, the transition will not be successful.
Customer centricity, therefore, should be integrated into your company’s values. While this may appear to be a formality, it has a profound impact on your company’s strategy, as it is the foundation on how customers, employees, and vendors will be treated in your business at all times. It is recommended to elaborate on this philosophy in a clear and articulate list of core values that your company intends to uphold at all times.
2. Evaluate where your customer experience stands
A 2013 research by Zendesk determined that 87% of customers think that brands need to put more effort into providing a consistent experience. Knowing and assessing what kind of experience your customers get when they transact with your business is essential to ensure that you have a good grasp on where you are currently positioned and what areas need improvement or addressing.
If evaluation reveals that you lack visibility in specific channels like online presence (whether through the website or social media), or that your sales and customer service staffs are inadequately trained in dealing with your customers’ inquiries, these can all be revealed through careful and objective assessment. Afterwards, you can move to implement measures to correct these shortcomings.
3. Hire the right people and create the right solutions
Having the right plan can still go awry if the people who are expected to follow through with them are not the kind of people that cannot adjust to the role. The people you hire should have the “customer focus” skills and mindset, as well as understand the value you have placed on customer satisfaction. They need to be prepared for the role they need to fulfil in your business and towards your customers.
Your products and services should also conform to your goal of customer-centricity. They need to be developed with the customers’ wants and needs in mind, or else they will still affect the kind of experience your customers get with your company.
4. Get employees fully engaged
A way to build on customer-centricity in your business is by making sure that your employees are sufficiently motivated to carry through with the philosophy. Reinforce the initial interest and motivation of everyone to become customer-centric by offering incentives and rewards for successful customer service and satisfied clientele reports. This gives your employees something to work hard for and fosters healthy competition between each other.
Another way to make sure that everyone is fully engaged is making sure that everyone – regardless of position or branch assignment – is involved in getting in on the front lines and interacting with customers. This can become a useful source of feedback for the different branches as well, whether on a general scale or towards something more specific to their responsibilities in the company.
5. Monitor your progress
Having a customer-centric culture is also about ensuring that there is a continuous movement, development, and improvement in the process. By monitoring how far has your company gone on its efforts to fully establish a culture of customer-centricity, embedding it in the very fabric of your organisation becomes much easier for everyone involved. It also makes further evaluation easier, and spotting areas for improvement faster.
Contact Business Coaches Sydney today at 1300 833 574 to learn more about our Business Coaching and Marketing Training.
Garret Norris
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