How to become a “Customer-Centric” company in 5 Simple Steps

Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable* than those without a similar customer focus. Here is a 5 ways-guide to become a customer-centric business :

1. Define your purpose and strategy

No customers, No business. Your must be clear on your business purpose and goals. There should be no doubt for your customers. Example, here is the mission of Amazon: “We serve consumers through our online and physical stores and focus on selection, price and convenience”. Amazon stick to the core of their mission through their products and services consistently since 1997. Another example IKEA strategy statement: “To create a better everyday life for the many people by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them”. Identify yours. Then, Make sure that each employee in your organisation know them and fulfill them in their day to day work

2. Build a customer-culture within your organization

A customer-centric company puts the customer first and at the center of every decision they make, from the C-suite level to everyday operations. A customer-centric organization is a matter of culture. The leadership team must empower what customer-centricity means for the organization and how it is articulated in practice. From C-suite to managers, everyone must own the customer lifecycle journey. They must be accountable for each key touch points within the customer lifecycle journey. Every key touch points must have an identified customer experience responsible. This enables customer-based indicators rather than product or silo-based views of the customer. This is a fundamental change to build a customer-centric culture. A number of organisations such as Oracle have developed Chief Customer Officer roles at C-suite levels to help facilitate and drive this change. It is typical that this CCO reports to the CEO and is member of the board.

3. Know your customers

Too many organisations focus on delivering “world class service” rather than giving to customers what they really want. In most case, giving to customers what they really want is a quick win process to follow which is not necessarily costly. Example, a traveller with connecting flights from Toulouse to Paris than New York would need different information than the traveller who directly fly from Paris to New York. Capture your customers data, be smart about them and learn who they are, know about their variances, define their profile. From there, act by tailoring the information you provide them according to their priority expectations.

4. Design the experience

Perception matters. It often starts with the brand. The brand is the essence of the underlying perception, that your customers have of an organization. The customer perception of a brand is based on what they see, hear and sense. Unfortunately, there are often disconnect delivery between Sales, Marketing and Customer Care. How to fix it? Define your end-to-end customer experience in order to identify and understand your key touch points. Identify key events that lead to a long-term perception and behaviours. Empower your staff to react and deliver competitive differentiation during these key customer interactions. Don’t forget social media too. More and more customers are expecting organisations to interact with them on.

5. Track, understand and act from data

Put in place a measurement framework to capture any data from customer lifecycle journey and especially from your customer key touchpoints. Don’t forget social media where customer reaction is immediate. Not enough though. Understand all insights from this data and act upon it to foster change towards a culture of continuous improvement. Define simple metric that is understood within the whole organization like NPS (Net Promoter Score) and track results against it. Put in place a culture of feedback loop from the bottom to the Top of your organization.

TL;DR follow these 5 steps to become a customer-centric organization :

1. Define your purpose and strategy
2. Know your customers
3. Build a customer culture within your organization
4. Design the experience
5. Track, understand and act from data

*Deloitte.

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