Nowadays, due to Internet, the customer always has the “magic wand” with the ability to change suppliers with just a couple of clicks. That is why companies looks forward to developing models under the premise of customer centricity, with a focus on optimizing the experiences they provide – particularly to their most valuable customers along with also improving the quality of service.
The customer focus is the central leitmotiv in a time of permanent disruption where brands are not as important as they were in the past and no one has a customer insured for life; a time when “tech” companies erode preexisting business models that used to be considered invulnerable.
The truly disruptive issue is not the technology itself, but thinking from the customer’s point of view and setting up a business model focused on it.
Customer Centricity
Given the disruption companies now face, we present 8 keys to develop the customer-centered business model:
√ Know the customers themselves: aim at identifying the customers – particularly those most valuable to the business – and not the products, in order to provide a truly personalized service.
√ Integrate sales channels: omnichannel is essential. It is necessary to facilitate an absolutely flexible and transparent customer journey, where customers can choose their own paths through your online presence.
√ Create experiences: generate a personalized experience ecosystem in which services (and products) are designed based on customer’s needs (considering their lifestyle, emotions and life situation). It may be necessary to monitor the customer journey and develop a customer experience map that informs (and allows to anticipate) those needs. √ Make decisions based on data: data is the key for understanding and predicting the customer’s needs. We must have a structured and automated process to collect, process, clean and analyze. √ Focus on the results: It is necessary to concentrate on the processes and initiatives that generate value and are relevant to the client.
√ Act with agility: Interdisciplinary and multifunctional teams must be designed in order to make their own operational decisions. √ Update IT: It is essential to have professional systems which facilitate interfaces, updates, and improvements. Data and analysis platforms can achieve the necessary requirements in the Cloud.
√ Encourage an entrepreneurial attitude: Employees and leaders are in charge of the transformation and must be willing to change. It is important to pursue a balance between coordination, control and creativity.
Customer Focus
A MarketingWeek investigation conducted among 10,000 companies in 60 countries, found out that the 19% of employees in highly performing companies said that a customer centric approach was fully accepted by all commercial functions, compared with only 13% in poor performance companies. The disruptive business models that are changing entire industries have a singular characteristic: they have a customer focus. To engage the concept of customer centricity, the new “tech” players are using direct contacts with customers through service models that ensure income stability. They also placed consumers on powerful ecosystems where they are invited to stay as long as possible, that’s why today having a customer strategy with a clear focus on the customer is no longer an option, but a “must have”.