Businesses exist because of the customers. In other words, without customers, there will be no businesses; therefore, companies and brands must be customer-centric. A brand with a customer-centric approach gets a competitive edge in the marketplace. Unfortunately, many companies often mistake their approach as customer-centric when they are either sales or product-driven. Before understanding the importance of customer-centric experience for brand building, it is crucial to understand its meaning.
What Does Customer-Centric Approach Mean?
As the name suggests, the customer-centric approach is the approach where the brands put the customer first. The customers are placed at the heart of the business. The ultimate aim of such brands is to offer customers a positive experience and, subsequently, build long-term relationships with them. When a brand engages in a customer-centric approach, they ensure all the business departments revolve around the customers’ needs and interests. There are numerous benefits of a customer-centric approach to brand building, and here is a list of a few.
Customer Loyalty
Brands that focus on a customer-centric approach manage to earn customer loyalty over a period of time. Furthermore, it builds a strong foundation of the customer base, which ensures that the customer chooses their brand over others. For example, United Airlines provides smooth WiFi connectivity to its customers through UnitedWifi meeting the internet requirement of the users. As a result, customers prefer to choose United Airlines over other airways for their travel. Customer loyalty also increases the customer’s lifetime value and helps customer retention.
Reduces Customer Acquisition Costs
A customer-centric approach keeps the customers happy. Therefore, the customers speak highly of the brand, which works on this model. Henceforward, most of the promotion of the brands happens through word of mouth. A traveler who enjoyed seamless internet connectivity in Alaska Air would recommend it to other travelers. Such leads and referrals reduce the customer acquisition cost of the brands.
Better Revenue
Money for the business comes from satisfied customers. So if brands manage to keep their customers happy, undoubtedly, they will increase their revenue and profit. Also, happy customers will leave good feedback and testimonials, attracting new customers. The result is a good revenue increase for the brands. According to research, customer-centric brands are 60% more profitable than companies which are not.
Also, with so many companies bringing in the same product and services, the key to success is providing customers with a positive experience. So again, it is only possible when a business is customer-centric. The next question is how brands can become more customer-centric. Here are a few ways to ensure that.
Make The Business Objectives Customer-Centric
Business objectives change every year depending on revenue rate, market and more. Most often, while discussing business objects, leaders only analyze the sales number, lead generated and other metrics. However, it is crucial to ask about the brand’s position in the context of customer centricity.
Take Regular Feedback
It is only possible to place the customers in the center by knowing what they actually want. Collecting customer feedback is an excellent way to understand your customer better. Without customer feedback, a brand might be under the illusion that they are customer-centric when they are not. Insights from feedback collected directly from the customers can help determine whether the business is moving in the right direction.
Stay Approachable And Accessible
Caring for the customer’s pain points is laborious and expensive but necessary. Therefore, it is essential to keep customer support numbers and emails easily accessible. If a customer faces a problem, they should be able to reach the brand stress-free. It is because inaccessibility will further aggravate the issue. Thus, when creating a brand website or social media page, ensure the “Contact Us” page is easy to find.
How To Measure Customer-Centric Approach?
If you have implemented a customer-centric approach in your brand, it is crucial to measure to ensure that the implementation is correct. You can check the success of the course through customer satisfaction score, customer happiness, churn rate, retention rate, customer lifetime value and engagement rate. Even though individually checking these metrics will not correctly show the success or failure, clubbing them together will give a clear picture. If all the metrics are following an upward trend, you can be sure that the customer-centric approach which you have taken for your business is working in the right direction.
