The customer should be at the centre of everything in business.
Being a customer centric business means that the customer is the focal point of all decisions related to delivering products, services and experiences to create customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.
Customer empathy is key to creating a client centric business. Essentially, customer empathy is the ability to identify a customer’s need, understand the reasons behind that need and respond to it effectively. Every time a decision is made in a customer centric firm, the same question is asked, “how does this benefit the customer?”
True customer centric businesses are the ones that try to understand things from the customers perspective. They offer great service and they build a relationship with their customers. They do not set out to surprise and delight a few lucky customers at the expense of others. Instead, they focus on creating efficient, consistent customer experiences that minimise friction and make the customer want to come back and buy your products or services again in the future.
In order to build a customer-centric business you need to start with your company culture. Culture is best defined as “the way we do things around here.” Having a customer centric culture means that your people value the customer’s needs and their experience of dealing with your firm. A customer centric team will look out for opportunities to make processes easier and more efficient for clients.
Customer centric businesses are always evolving. As your business changes, so will your customers.
As such, it is important to re-evaluate the customer experience at each stage of the buyer’s journey to find new ways to improve the customer experience.
You can measure the success of your customer centric strategy with KPIs such as customer retention rate – the number of customers who are loyal and make repeat purchases. Another good measure of how client centric your firm is, is to measure customer lifetime value. This measures how much revenue a single customer will generate throughout their entire relationship with your business. It’s a good way to account for purchase frequency, purchase value and average lifespan of a customer relationship.
