As a CEO, I can tell you that the world of business is changing.
Fast.
Sometimes it feels like adapting is impossible and stressful. Not only do you have to tackle the competition, you also have to deal with rapid change in technology.
And those are a full plate already.
Then there’s one more thing you have to deal with – pleasing your customers!
In business, there’s nothing more important than that last one. Of course, you already know why.
Without customers, you have no business. And so, pleasing your customers should be at the centre of your organization.
However, this isn’t the case in every business. Not many brands out there are focused on delivering value to their customers.
They focus more on raising profits at all costs.
But there’s one thing that’s interesting here…
Being customer-centric has a ton of benefits, including increasing profits.
In fact, did you know that brands with higher customer experience score perform better than their competition in the same industry?
Now you do.
The truth is, building a customer-focused business requires a drastic change in your paradigm. A lot of business owners are averse to change, hence their inability to make this shift.
But you can.
Here are 5 points to help you build a customer-centric business as a CEO:
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Understand And Plan Out The Customer Journey
Nobody just buys things straight out of nowhere.
Before a purchase is made, there are other things that happen first. Your customers go from the point of desire through a series of stages to the point of purchase.
This is called buyer or customer journey.
The reason many brands fail to build a customer-focused business is because they only pay attention to the buying stage.
And because of this negligence, customer satisfaction in each stage drops.
The truth is that every stage in the customer journey is as important as the other. Why? Because every stage leads the buyer to the next, hence, creating a sort of chain link.
If the process is complex or tedious, potential customers may not reach the final stage and make a purchase.
For this reason, CEOs need to evaluate the entire journey and look for ways to make it better.
You need to listen to your customers and find out what part of their journey they find unhelpful. Then you can either tweak it or get rid of it.
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Build Oneness In Your Organization
For the sake of order, organizations are divided into departments. Each department handles different aspects of the business.
While this is the norm, it can have negative effect on your customer experience.
How?
Let me explain…
Because each department is focused on their task, there’s little interact with other department. This causes each department to be starkly ignorant about the operations of the other department.
And the result?
When a customer has a problem, a staff of one department may say, “I don’t know about this; it’s not my department.”
The customer gets tossed from one department to the other and made to repeat their complaint.
I’m sure you already know the end result of that.
To solve this problem, you want to foster collaboration across all departments.
You should update every member of your staff. They must be prepared to provide customers with accurate answers, regardless of their department.
Create a platform that gives every staff access to the same information database while ensuring that you update it regularly.
Consequently, your customers will receive consistent answers regardless of who they interact with.
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Foster Empathy
Our extreme capacity to demonstrate concern for one another is what separates us from the animals.
It is called empathy.
And in the business world where it’s dog eat dog, only brands that demonstrate empathy win.
Customers flock to businesses that show them that they understand their needs and are willing to do something about it.
For this reason, you should encourage your staff to show empathy to your customers. They should apologize to customers for any inconvenience and tell them that they understand how the customers feel.
Furthermore, they should observe visual and verbal cues of customers and respond empathically. Your staff should assure customers that their complaints are taken seriously and show it.
Basically, your team should learn to put themselves in the customer’s shoes and feel their pain.
On the other hand, this may be difficult to do through email or instant chat.
It is quite difficult to tell if a person is angry or happy in writing.
To resolve this, you could use Natural Language Processing algorithms. These platforms help to analyse emails to give you an idea of the emotion contained in the text.
As a result, your staff will respond appropriately, building a deeper connection with your customers.
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Listen To Your Customers And Act Accordingly
Improving customer experience is a continuous process. You are never through with it.
Why?
It’s because customer expectations are changing by the second. It appears like customers wake up every day with fresh desires that they expect brands to fulfil.
With this in mind, you and your team need to listen to your customers consistently. And not just that, you need to act accordingly.
The two questions you must answer are: what do your customers want now and how can you provide it?
And it all starts with the ability to listen.
How can you do this?
You can design Voice of the Customer programs that analyse all customer interactions with your staff.
While many brands rely on single channel VoC programs, you must ensure that you program can access multiple channels.
Analysing multiple channels gives you a complete picture of how your customers feel and what they want.
Moreover, it shows you areas of your business that need your attention and helps you make changes in real time.
Multi-channelled VoC programs make the listening process both efficient and cost effective.
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Keep Innovating Everyday
Human desires are insatiable. Your customers are humans. I’m sure you see where I am getting at.
Because customer expectations are infinite, you need to keep innovating to keep your delivery fresh. Customers quickly get used to great customer service and see it as normal.
Therefore, you need to wear your thinking cap and churn out fresh ideas. Fresh ideas that will help keep you at the top of the food chain in your industry.
In conclusion…
Customer expectation will outlive every business. Therefore, if you want to remain relevant and build a customer-centric brand, you must consider these 5 points.
You need to change your paradigm to correspond with these points. Because anything else will lead to customer churn. And you don’t want that, do you?
These 5 points are easy to apply, but they can move you up the customer experience ranks in your industry.
Now go put them to work.
By the way…
Did you know that Wi-Fi analytics and marketing platforms can help you gather real data from your customers?
Personal data such as names and email addresses can improve the way you communicate with them.
To learn more about how Spotonwifi can help you improve your marketing results, contact us right now. We are happy to answer any questions you may have.
POSTED ON February 13, 2020Share:
