A Guide to Customer-Centric Transformation

Customer-centricity is a way of doing business that fosters a positive customer centric experience at every stage of the customer journey. It builds customer loyalty and satisfaction which leads to referrals for more customers.

Customer-Centricity, truth to be spoken is a wild goose chase. Every single business in the world would claim that they are customer-centric but to what extent? Well, no business can succeed without aligning its services and products to the exact requirement of its customers.

There are a lot many points to remember, prepare and get into action when Customer-Centricity is a business goal. This blog will give you clear insights on how to be customer-centric and transform your business. Read on.

A Guide to Customer-Centric Transformation

Know what the customers think:

Many modern-day approaches like A/B testing and NPS metrics is to understand the psyche of the customers. All the strategies on all the levels from top level management to the bottom should be designed based on customer-centricity. There are many ways to understand the market demands and the requirements.

Some of them are truly traditional, but those works, for example online surveys. Surveys help in making important business decisions. Conducting customer centric research, whether it be online or direct demands time and money. A small or medium sized organization cannot afford it. An outsourcing team can be of great help here.

Their services would leave you worriless over who would send countless forms to people, analyze them and come to a valid conclusion. Usually, platforms like Zoho survey, SurveyMonkey and Poll Daddy are helping the process to get automated. Survey is not the only way to understand how public is perceiving your brand, products and/or services. There are other methods like using web analytics, enquiring with the people directly and other innovative solutions as well.

Follow the decision-making trail:

From the time a customer decides to purchase a product or avail a service to the actual time they make it practical, there is a huge time difference. Say between the point ‘A’ and the point ‘B’, if a business can provide customer-centric treatment anywhere in the process, the conversion becomes easier and one can reduce the chances of losing a customer. Business community and theorists believe that a decision process is of 7 elusive steps.

First is identifying the product/services one wants to get, the second is gathering relevant information, third is identifying the alternatives, forth is weighing the evidence, fifth is choosing among alternatives, sixth is fixing the choice and the seventh is reviewing the decisions and consequences. As a marketer or as the communication strategist of your company, if you can influence the prospect at any of these stages with customer-centricity as its focus, then a huge revenue can be generated.

Acquiring customers with the help of modern techniques like SEO or PPC would be great in the bigger picture but digital marketing alone won’t serve the purpose. The right way would be mixing and matching the trendy strategies in the industry a business is into. For this a constant watch on the market, customer and competitors are a necessity. Its not a cake walk, so better outsource it to an external agency or rely on a virtual assistant service and get it done within a budget price.

Build a customer centric organization:

All the efforts to bring customer-centricity need not necessarily involve directing every strategy towards the prospects and the customers. It can be planted and cultivated within the organization, among the employees. Employees unanimously should believe in giving foremost priority to the customers. Getting a grip over slipping competitiveness in today’s fluid and multichannel market is possible only with the help of new customer centric experience tactics devised by people who has a customer-experience vision. T

here are companies around the globe with dedicated customer-experience enhancement teams that focus on solving on customer centric problems. Well, that’s the true definition of customer-centricity. Ranjay Gulati, a professor of Harvard Business School once rightly said “I’m not here to sell what I produce. I’m here to solve my customer’s problem.” The point is that all along the business journey employees and employers should feel connected to the prospects and customers. Sometimes it means cancelling important meeting, revising schedules, giving up on holidays and occasionally forgetting to make more profits.

Customer Lifetime Value:

Customer centric Lifetime Value or CLV is an interesting calculation that measures the amount of revenue a customer centric contributes to your organizations as long as they are your customers. Longer they avail the product, the stronger you made a relationship with the people who has trust in your brand. Understanding how to calculate CLV will be insightful in perceiving why is it important to be customer-centric.

Follow what other customer centric organizations are doing:

Every successful companies in any economy would be customer-centric. Lack of digital transformation is the reason why some of the brands are lagging in progress. From adopting technologies to getting feedback to implementing the changes desired by the customers, there are certain characteristics that all the successful organizations possess.

These organizations are pro active in engaging with their customers, they value their customer feedback, they come up with customer centric engaging programs, introduce customer loyalty programs, focus on creating products and services depending on the geographical location of the operation, measure business data that are relevant in creating customer loyalty, etc.

Use customer-centric tools:

Some of the modern solutions and tools make the life of the customers much easier. And there are tools that help marketers to clearly compare, analysis and uncover the value of customer experiences. Tools like Mobile Metrix gives marketers how consumers spend their time on various devices.

This helps in strategically plan the advertisement communication and identify growth in various demographics. Another tool, Google Analytics 360 suite is very commonly used tool across various organizations to analyze data from all the touchpoints to understand the customers in depth. There are other tools like Buffer, Quintly, ViralWoot, SurveyMonkey, Customer centric Insights, Client Heartbeat and much more.

Stay open to experts’ voice:

NGDATA, a Belgium based company that accelerate digital transformation through unique solutions has published an astute article on various experts talking on customer-centricity based on their experiences. Listed below are the important ones.

“Customer-driven marketing strategy is only as successful as its appeal to your customers; understanding what resonates with your clientele can only come from them. Regularly posing questions, making time for interviews, and capturing the feedback of a large audience is a great way to produce win-win programming.” – Stephanie White, Firmex

“The single most important ingredient to any effective customer-driven marketing strategy is targeting your market. Use marketing research to identify common demographic characteristics within your customer centric base, such as age, gender, occupation, and income level. The more you know about your customer centric base, the easier it is to develop a strategy that will appeal to these characteristics. As a result, you waste less time and money trying to reach unlikely prospects.” – Zondra Wilson, Blu Skin Care, LLC

Conclusion

Well, when most organizations are giving more importance to financial metrics, go against the flow and build a value-oriented, customer centric organization that values the voice of the people. Having no time and budget shouldn’t be an excuse for the positive move when there are umpteen outsourcing and freelancer option available in the market for a reasonable prize.

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