Customer Centricity. How to make your organization more customer-centric?

Being customer centric is a business philosophy that brings many benefits to the company that puts it into practice. Customer centricity means putting the customer at the centre of all a company’s decisions, strategies and operations. And that means deeply understanding customer needs, wants, behaviours and expectations, and using that knowledge to create value throughout the customer experience. If a company is aligned with the wants and expectations of its customers, it will find it much easier to retain customers and acquire new ones.

Are companies as customer centric as they can be? Certainly not. If we were to ask the managers of any company if they are customer centric, most of them would say yes. But if we were to ask customers whether companies adapt effectively to their needs and expectations, the answer would probably not be so conclusive. This happens for a variety of reasons. Sometimes there is a conflict of interest between different stakeholders in the company, such as investors, partners, or key employee groups. In those situations, sometimes decisions are not as customer-centric as they could be. And when they are, there are always economic, technological, human or other constraints that keep the company from reaching the threshold that customers want as desirable.

Por eso la mayoría de organizaciones tienen recorrido de mejora para ser customer centric. Y la investigación sobre los clientes es una herramienta fundamental para conseguirlo.

What is a customer centric company?

Being customer centric means that the customer is at the centre of all business decisions and actions. It means putting the customer at the centre of the organisation’s strategy, culture and innovation.

For a company to be customer centric means:

• Understanding customers deeply. Knowing who they are, what they value, what bothers them, how they make decisions, how they behave and what they expect from the company.
• Designing memorable experiences. Create products, services and processes tailored to their real needs, not just what the company thinks they need.
• Make decisions based on the voice of the customer. Actively listen to customers and use that information to constantly improve.
• Foster a customer-centric organisational culture. All employees – from the CEO to the customer service person – understand their impact on the customer experience and work in alignment with that purpose.

Benefits of being a customer centric company

We have already seen that adapting to what customers really want is like sailing with the wind at your back. It makes everything much easier and has a positive impact on all areas of the business.

Impact of the customer centric strategy on sales

Customer-centric strategies improve a company’s ability to generate revenue.

• Reduced customer acquisition costs (CAC). When products and messages are designed to match customer needs and expectations, it is easier to connect and convert, making marketing budgets and sales processes more effective.
• Increasing customer lifetime value (CLTV). A customer centric strategy can increase customer loyalty and retention. Satisfied and valued customers tend to stay longer and buy more. Reduce acquisition costs because keeping existing customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones.
• Increased referrals. Satisfied customers can recommend the company’s products or services, which again leads to increased ability to grow the customer base without incurring the cost of acquiring them.
• Increased sales and turnover. When it is easier to attract and retain customers, it is possible to have a direct impact on business growth.

Impact of customer centric strategy on the brand

The impact of customer centric strategy also impacts brand equity and the ability to remain relevant to customers over time.

• Differentiation that is difficult to imitate. Differentiation through customer experience is harder to copy than price or product. Customer centric companies tend to lead markets and withstand crises better.
• Better reputation and brand. Satisfied customers speak well of the company, improving public perception. Increases brand value and attracts talent and strategic partners.
• More successful innovation. By deeply understanding the customer, innovations are more successful. Customer-centric strategy reduces the risk of launching products or services for which there is no real demand.

Impact of customer-centric strategy on operations

The benefits of being more customer centric do not end in the areas of marketing and sales. Its impact also extends to business operations.

• Improved operational efficiency. Processes designed with the customer in mind are simpler and faster. Less rework and adjustments due to misunderstandings or incorrect designs.
• Reduced support and claims costs. Better experience reduces errors, confusion and complaints. Fewer incidents mean less time and money spent resolving problems.

As you can see, being more customer centric not only improves the customer experience, but also boosts the company’s financial results.

How to be more customer centric?

For a company to become more customer centric, it needs to work decisively in several areas:

• Unambiguous and aligned organisational culture. The idea of customer centricity, customer centricity, must start from the commitment of management at the highest level. Leaders must be the first to adopt and promote the customer centric strategy. For this to happen, customers must be at the heart of the company’s purpose, mission and values. And it must communicate clearly and regularly about the priority of adapting to customers’ wants and expectations. For teams that do not know how to adapt to customers, the necessary training must be promoted so that they can improve their skills and their contribution to customer orientation. With a strong organisational drive, it is easier to align the whole organisation and move it forward to achieve the objectives.
• Listen actively to the customer. To put the customer at the centre of decisions, it is essential to constantly collect feedback. This can be done through mechanisms that allow data to be collected at scale, such as surveys, interviews, reviews, social media mentions and more. But it can also be done through the creation of channels open to customers to facilitate direct contact and allow them to voice their complaints and suggestions. The ideal is to set up different mechanisms – phone, email, chat, networks… – so that the customer can choose their preferred channel. Once collected, the data should be analysed to find learnings that point to improvements to be made to improve customer centricity.
• Segmentation and personalisation. In order to develop a customer centric strategy, it is essential to have a deep knowledge, not only of customers as a group, but also of each of them individually. It must be understood that not all customers are the same, so the experience must be adapted to their needs. Having a market segmentation based on customer needs allows you to tailor products, services and messages to priority customer segments. To go one step further, tools such as CRMs allow you to collect customer information on an individualised basis and at scale. They make it possible to organise an interaction based on the history of their relationship with the brand. Products and services can then be offered that are precisely tailored to their needs.
• Design customer-centric experiences. The first step is to create a customer journey map that identifies all touch points and detects critical moments. Secondly, be inflexible to reduce friction points and optimise processes that cause customer frustration (such as returns, customer service or waiting times). And finally, surprise and delight by looking for those little details that manage to exceed customer expectations.
• Measure and continuously improve. In a customer centric strategy it is essential to continuously evaluate the company’s performance with key indicators such as the NPS (Net Promoter Score), the CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) or the CES (Customer Effort Score). Combining different indicators always provides a more comprehensive view of opportunities for improvement.
• Involve the entire organisation. For a customer centric strategy to be successfully implemented, all teams in the organisation must be aligned. Listening to employees who are in direct contact with customers and celebrating all tangible progress that benefits customers will help keep customer centricity a key priority for the organisation in the long term.

Research to become a more customer centric company

To develop a customer centric culture, market research plays a key role because it provides key insights into customers and their experience. A truly customer centric company combines different types of research to get a holistic view of the customer: who they are, what they need, how they act and how they feel at every touch point.

• Understanding customers’ deep needs. Qualitative research helps you understand customers’ motivations, needs and expectations. Studies based on focus groups or in-depth interviews allow you to find insights that you can use to define your long-term strategy.
• Segmentation. Segmentation studies allow you to identify different groups of customers according to behaviour, needs, interests, demographics, etc. Among all segmentation criteria, those based on customer value are the most effective and will help you personalise the customer experience
• Satisfaction. Satisfaction surveys measure the brand’s performance in serving customers effectively across different products, services or customer touch points. Choose from NPS, CSAT, CES or combine these indicators to get a more complete picture of customer satisfaction.
• Usability testing. When interacting with customers in digital environments, it is key to ensure that the user experience is smooth and easy. With all kinds of usability tests you can improve your users’ experience and increase your conversions.

With the We are testers research platform, you can carry out all these types of studies with a single tool. The panel of 130,000 consumers and users gives you quick access to all kinds of profiles for your studies to complement your own databases. And We are testers’ team of research experts will always be at your side at all times to make sure you are on the right track or to take care of everything for you.

Need more help to make your company customer centric? Contact our experts to answer your questions.