Developing focus towards the client may sound a little abstract to many. But truth is that companies that manage to successfully carry it out get an increase in costumer lifetime value, a significant increase in income and a reduction in rotation. The customer lifetime value (CLV) measures the level of income that a client provides the company while being an active paying client. It starts with their first purchase and ends when they stop making business with the organization. Calculating the CLV helps understand why it makes sense to invest in keeping clients.
Organizations based on the customer centricity philosophy manage to create and maintain profitable and loyal clients. Particularly when they also have a linked and tuned customer strategy. In fact, a study discovered that companies with customer centricity are 60% more profitable than those who do not follow this philosophy. And, besides, customer centricity is a key aspect in digital transformation.
On the other hand, bad customer service also draws away good employees: a research found that 83% of the employees who work for companies with good customer service plan to remain in their jobs, compared to only 56% of employees who wish to continue working for companies that do not prioritize customers.
Actually, the concept of customer centricity is not new. Many companies have been trying to embody it for around 20 years. However, a survey found that only 14% of marketing specialists state that customer centricity is a distinctive seal of their companies, and barely 11% believe that clients would agree with this characterization.
Work culture
However, being a customer-centered company goes beyond merely offering good customer service. Customer centricity is a culture, not an isolated event. To reach it, there are several key points:
√ Customer satisfaction must be part of the company’s values, philosophy and work culture and it must be placed ahead of everything else. Making a purpose declaration might be a good start.
√ Raise awareness: It is essential that most of the organization’s members truly believe in the impact and the benefits of a customer-centered culture for the performance of the company.
√ Empower staff so that they may make decisions that improve the user’s experience. Link their growth and incentives with client satisfaction.
√ Reward employees who make an extra effort to solve problems or create something that makes users or clients’ lives easier. Celebrate the acquisition, incorporation, retention and renewal of clients as special events within the work culture. √ Get full 360° views of clients. When launching big data and CRM strategies organizations gather a huge amount of data and they can use them to improve the user or client’s experience. They manage to understand their purchase and interest’s behavior and identify opportunities to create products and services for the best clients.
Focus on customers
To optimize the user or client’s experience it is also essential to eliminate certain obstacles that prevent the sales teams from spending time with them. Besides, attention has to be paid to these ideas:
– Develop products and services, and also processes and policies, with customer centricity.
– Customize the client’s experience. In the customer centricity era, it is essential to give clients what they need, not what the company needs to sell.
– Involve all of the organization’s areas in client satisfaction (decision-makers, sales and services, product development and engineering). Customer experience (CX) leaders must meet and collaborate with other departments to carry out improvements during the whole of the customer lifetime cycle.
– Hire staff who can interpret the value given to client satisfaction and be prepared to make an extra effort. In this sense, friendly personality features should be considered (and not only technical abilities).
– Anticipate to the clients’ needs and delight them with products and services they probably have not even thought about.
– Ask clients what they think. A customer consulting board can even be set up, since they will be in a better position to validate the products and services offers.
Current organizations must focus on creating positive experiences and at the same time make sure that it is easy for clients to work with them. And even though this transformation is not reached from dusk till dawn, good news is that when it comes to creating a culture of customer centricity, incremental small changes and modest improvements may bring about great benefits.
Has your organization already embodied this customer centricity philosophy? We would like you to comment on the process here!