Aimee serves as the CEO and lead visionary at Madison Taylor Marketing.
It’s easy for businesses to get swept up in the day-to-day pursuit of increased market share, higher ROI and bigger bottom lines. While it’s crucial for organizations to be forward-thinking and money-minded, companies that focus solely on driving revenue typically fall short of creating sustainable, long-term growth. After all, chasing profit doesn’t enable long-term success, and hyper-focusing on the latest and greatest innovations and market opportunities can only take brands so far.
Companies that adopt a customer-centric approach tend to outperform their competitors in terms of revenue generation and market share. Therefore, to achieve long-term growth and sustained success, leaders should consider shifting away from a profit-first focus and toward a customer-centric mindset.
What Is Customer Centricity?
Customer centricity is a way of doing business that places customers at the center of every key function, decision and deliverable. Rather than focusing on sales, products or campaigns, customer-centric companies focus on making customers their number-one priority. Then, they design everything else around this mindset.
In customer-centric organizations, the primary goal is to create a quality customer experience across every aspect of the customer journey. This includes everything from website UI/UX design to customer service, payment processing, marketing and more. It doesn’t matter if the customer comes into direct or indirect contact with a company’s brand—every aspect of the business is designed to put the customer’s needs first.
The Importance Of Being Customer-Centric
The importance of customer-centric marketing and business operations cannot be overstated. Whether it’s through increasing customer retention, generating brand loyalty or cultivating a competitive edge, adopting a customer-centric approach can enable organizations to experience sustainable growth. Here are a few of the biggest benefits companies see when they focus on putting their customers first.
• Increased Revenue And Market Share
Not only can customer-centric companies grow their revenues 4% to 8% faster than their market competitors, but they can also reap higher profits compared to their product-centric counterparts. According to one study of over 1,300 organizations across 80 countries, 84% of organizations that focused on improving customer experiences increased their revenue, and 79% reported significant cost savings. This is largely due to the fact that repeat customers are less expensive to acquire and maintain than attracting brand-new ones. In fact, acquiring new customers can cost as much as five times more than retaining existing ones, and a 2% improvement in customer retention is equivalent to the profit generated by cutting costs by 10%.
• Increased Trust, Satisfaction And Loyalty
In addition to driving higher profits, customer-centricity enables companies to increase customer trust, satisfaction and loyalty. Positive customer service experiences account for over two-thirds of customer loyalty, which is greater than the loyalty driven by brand and price perception combined. In fact, according to a study by Gallup Workplace, customer-centric companies saw a 25% increase in customer loyalty and a 20% increase in customer confidence. Moreover, with 81% of customers reporting that they want brands to get to know them and 66% reporting that they would be willing to share their personal data to receive a more personalized experience, it’s clear that buyers are seeking brand relationships now more than ever. By adopting a customer-centric focus, businesses can give their customers the personalized relationships and quality experiences they crave—something that can translate not only into increased profits but also into long-term, sustainable growth.
How To Create A Customer-Centric Culture
Given the numerous benefits associated with customer-centricity, I have witnessed more and more brands starting to invest in initiatives that put their customers first. As companies begin to shift their focus toward customer-centricity, it’s important to understand that adopting a customer-centric mindset requires a widespread cultural shift. Here are five steps companies can take to ingrain customer-centricity into every aspect of their organization.
1. Clarify and align your mission, vision and values. Companies should take time to clarify and align their mission and values to support a culture of customer centricity. At its core, the organization must be focused on building genuine, lasting customer relationships, and every organizational function and decision should support this mission. You can achieve this alignment by encouraging employees to consistently ask themselves, “How will this impact or improve the lives of our customers?” when considering any new changes or business initiatives.
2. Generate buy-in. Change is difficult without widespread organizational support. Therefore, companies transitioning to a customer-centric mindset must gather input from teams across departments to facilitate learning and increase participation. From my experience, this often entails creating in-person team workshops where employees across all departments reflect on how their positions can impact and improve customer experiences.
3. Map out the buyer’s journey. Building a customer-centric culture requires a thorough understanding of what customers experience when they interact with a brand. To do this, I recommend mapping out the buyer’s journey. From there, you can align key functions and decisions to support and improve customer experiences.
4. Create accountability checks. Companies need to leverage data and analytics to track and improve their interactions with customers. Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with your customers’ experiences and then build these KPIs into strategies and performance reviews to create accountability checks.
5. Develop supportive systems. It’s not enough to talk about customer centricity; organizations must also develop and implement supportive systems that enable employees to adopt a customer-centric approach. This includes creating training opportunities, dedicating the necessary time and resources and establishing communication flows to ensure that employees have what they need to enact effective customer-centricity.
Setting Sights On Customer Centricity
While it’s necessary for businesses to be profit-minded, a proven way to achieve long-term growth and financial success is to develop lasting customer relationships that foster brand loyalty, customer satisfaction and trust. So, instead of focusing on how to sell a product or increase market share, focus on simply taking care of the people who buy your products and services. After all, when it comes to developing successful marketing and brand longevity, chasing profits is unlikely to get a company as far as prioritizing its customers will.
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