What is Customer Centric/purpose/importance/ benefits/challenges/measurement/Examples
What Is Customer Centric?
Customer Centric , in a literal translation from English to Portuguese, is a strategy that, as the name implies, places the consumer as the focus of all the company’s decisions .
In other words, it means that, before taking any kind of position, the institution must consider what would be best for its customers.
Maybe you’re asking yourself: “but shouldn’t this be something natural, which was already on the schedule of any business?”.
In theory, yes.
However, it is common for a company to dedicate itself only to initial planning and leave the needs of the public aside.
If you have an already traditional restaurant, but that only serves in the physical space and your sales are falling, for example, closing your eyes to the possibility of offering a delivery service can be the denial of a latent demand and the stubbornness in maintaining a business plan that no longer works like it used to.
In other words, it means going against Customer Centric.
In addition, the strategy of having the customer as the center is something that must be worked very well.
After all, each company has its target audience which, in turn, has its specificities.
Therefore, Customer Centric should not be a generic concept, but customized to your reality .
What Is The Purpose Of The Customer Centric Concept?
The purpose of Customer Centric can be summarized in an expression widely used in digital marketing called User Experience (UX) , the user experience .
UX is based on trying to ensure maximum customer satisfaction through personalized actions that arouse feelings such as:
- Representativeness/recognition : the person needs to feel contemplated by the company’s actions, see themselves as part of that
- Valuing/exclusivity: each customer is unique and not just another one, but it is not enough to just say that, it is necessary to demonstrate
- Inclusion/Participation: Consumer opinion matters and they want to see their considerations taken into account
- Fulfillment: More than any other desire, customers want to have their needs met.
By provoking and stimulating these emotions, the company will be much closer to ensuring the beginning of a virtuous circle that has the following representation:
- Customer satisfaction ⇄ Customer loyalty ⇄ Higher conversion.
How Does Customer Centric Work?
In digital marketing , improving the user experience involves delivering more relevant and optimized content for search engines, having a responsive and mobile-friendly website, improving page loading and offering a secure connection, for example.
Customer Centric works a little more differently, if analyzed more globally.
Basically, it needs to be present in all strategic planning and follow the steps that are part of the sales cycle.
Customer Centric must be thought of from the first interaction with the customer, when he is still just a potential consumer, and proceed with the other stages of his journey until reaching the post-sales.
It all starts, therefore, from a personalized and detailed study of the customer’s habits and behaviors to identify their needs and preferences and, then, implement improvements.
Thinking about more practical actions, the strategy needs to work in the sense of increasing customer satisfaction , which can mean diversifying the relationship channels so that more feedbacks reach the company and consumers can feel heard.
How Important Is Customer Centric To A Company’s Strategy?
The interesting thing about analyzing the importance of Customer Centric in companies is that gains are not only found in the institution-client relationship — which is the most obvious — but also in the trust of the employees themselves.
According to a SurveyMonkey survey , 83% of employees say that customer satisfaction being a business priority makes them feel more secure in their jobs , ensuring they don’t think about a job change for the next two years.
This is a logic that makes sense, since a business that is concerned with offering good experiences to its customers tends to be more accurate in its actions and add value to the results.
As a consequence, those known routine frictions between teams, generated by route errors and unsatisfactory performances, tend to be rarer.
Added to this interesting data, we have other numbers that attest to the benefits that adopting a customer-centric strategy can bring:
- Consumer-focused companies are 60% more profitable , according to a Deloite study
- Customers are willing to pay 86% more for better experiences, according to the CEI Report
- Companies that invest in customer satisfaction have a 10% increase in customer retention and a 30% growth in brand equity , according to a survey by Bain & Co.
- The estimated cost of losing customers to poor service could be as high as $1.6 trillion, according to Accenture research .
What Benefits Does Customer Centric Provide To The Business?
Faced with so many positive numbers, the importance of having a strategic plan that includes Customer Centric is quite clear.
Even so, we list five practical examples of benefits that can be added from the implementation of this model, which has the customer at the center of all actions. Check out!
Customer Satisfaction
When he goes to a company and intends to buy a product or consume a service, the customer wants to have his needs met .
For this to happen, the consumer needs to be heard so that the attendant knows exactly what he is looking for.
No wonder 70% of businesses that offer an exceptional customer experience use customer feedback, according to thinkJar research .
Reputation Improvement
Nowadays, information reaches many more people and more quickly, thanks to social networks and other means of online relationship.
A review or positive feedback can go viral on the Internet, improving your company’s reputation.
But this is a movement that doesn’t just happen for the good — in fact, negative responses tend to gain much more repercussion.
Therefore, it is important to offer a good service so as not to be viewed badly by the market.
Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage is one of the most sought after elements by companies in a scenario of so much competition.
Putting the consumer at the center of all your actions can deliver this much-desired differential, since, as already shown in this article, the user experience has already surpassed the price and the quality of the product itself as a determining factor for customer loyalty . .
CAC Reduction
CAC, for those who don’t know, is the acronym for Customer Acquisition Cost, a metric that estimates the total amount spent until the consumer buys something from you (a product or a service).
When you work with Customer Centric and have loyalty as a high priority, that cost goes down.
This is because there is a much greater dedication to knowing the profile of the target audience, their characteristics and needs.
The result of this is an increase in the efficiency of the actions developed.
ROI Increase
Return on investment is another benefit that Customer Centric brings to companies.
After all, by working so that customers have the best experience possible, they feel safer to buy more and recommend your brand to their acquaintances.
How To Implement Customer Centric In Your Company?
Now that you already know all the benefits that implementing Customer Centric in your company can bring, how about putting the theory aside a little and start discovering what you need to do for the strategy to be successfully put into practice?
We have prepared a step by step for you. Follow up!
Map The Customer Journey
To take the right actions and actually offer a more positive experience to consumers, it is necessary to know, in detail, their purchase journeys.
In other words, it is necessary to know the path that the customer takes, even after completing a purchase , so that personalized offers are made for each customer profile.
Invest In Customer-Focused Leadership
Implementing Customer Centric also involves assembling your team of professionals.
All employees, especially the main leaders , need to understand the importance of always putting the customer as a priority.
Through example, these higher-level employees convey the message to others until a culture of customer appreciation is created.
Know Your Customer
How are you going to deliver a positive customer experience if you don’t know what they’re looking for?
Therefore, knowing in depth who your personas are is essential for the success of Customer Centric.
The good news is that management tools , such as CRM , can help in this regard.
Use Data Analysis
Whether filling out registrations and landing pages or even in the purchase history, customers record valuable information that needs the attention of companies.
Analyzing this data is essential to, for example, find out why a consumer abandoned an item in the shopping cart and never returned to consume it in the store and what can be done to win it back.
Explore Different Customer Relationship Channels
The secret here lies in diversity.
Invest in omnichannel service so that the customer can choose the best channel to interact and seek information.
What Are The Main Challenges Of Implementing Customer Centric?
There is no doubt that Customer Centric is a strategy that brings positive results and is fully implementable.
However, just like any change, it can also bring challenges, such as:
- Implement the new culture in all sectors of the company
- Change the mindset of employees
- Accept that initial planning needs to be adapted
- Change the thinking that all customers are the same and therefore there is no reason to customize actions
- Relying too much on experience and ignoring indicators
- Understand that it is a long-term strategy .
How To Measure Customer Centric?
Implementing a policy that values the customer experience is important, but don’t think that’s the end of the process.
In order for your goals to actually achieve the expected results, you need to closely monitor the progress of your strategies.
And the best way to have reliable indicators is to use equally reliable metrics, like the ones we show below.
Churn Rate
For those who don’t know, Churn represents the cancellation of a contract or service.
This metric helps to measure precisely those customers who are not buying from your company.
That is, having a high Churn rate is not a good sign .
This can be an indication that you are able to attract customers, but for some reason they are leaving your business.
Just to give you an idea, 67% of consumers consider bad experiences as a reason to Churn, according to a ThinkJar survey .
Lifetime Value (LTV)
This metric measures the company’s profit per customer.
In other words, it calculates how much money you’ve made since the person in question became a frequent consumer of your brand.
LTV is an interesting indicator, because from it, it is possible to design personalized strategies for each persona, based on their profile and purchase history .
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Few metrics are as useful for measuring customer experience as NPS .
This indicator calculates which consumers are classified as detractors, neutrals and brand promoters.
That is, the Net Promoter Score tells you who are dissatisfied, indifferent and satisfied with the company in question.
So you can develop strategies for the detractor and neutral groups to decrease and the satisfied group to grow.
Examples Of Companies That Have Successfully Implemented Customer Centric
Success stories from large companies can serve as inspiration for your business and show that implementing Customer Centric is the right choice.
Check out the three examples we have separated for you.
Disney
Long before the creation of the Customer Centric concept, Walt Disney already placed the customer at the center of his business.
Some say that, in 1955, at the opening of his first amusement park, the creator of Mickey Mouse would have uttered the following phrase when taking the stage: “customer first” .
Decades passed and Walt Disney’s speech remained current.
It is even possible to see clear changes in the company’s film productions.
Perhaps the most evident of these is the modification of the protagonists’ profile in the films. The princesses and princes gave way to more representative characters and closer to the reality of consumers.
The old man from “UP – Altas Aventuras”, the young Mexican boy from “Viva – A Vida é uma Festa”, the jazz teacher from “Soul” and, more recently, the animation “Luca”, all set in Italy, are examples of this.
McDonalds
When we think of fast food, McDonald’s is often the first brand that comes to mind, right?
However, this monopoly came to be threatened with the emergence of new competitors and the stagnation of the company , which for years had lost its competitive edge.
It was then that the snack franchise, represented in advertising by Ronald the clown, began to analyze Big Data and raised a series of improvements that could be made.
The inclusion of a healthier menu and the availability of the breakfast menu at other opening hours of the establishments were some of the measures implemented.
Another McDonald’s insight came from negative customer feedback.
Criticism of the delay in the service of a service that should be “fast” flooded the company’s social networks.
It was then that the franchise decided to install self-service totems in physical stores, which made the fulfillment and preparation of orders much faster.
Hilton Hotels & Resorts
The threat of competition has the biggest fast-food chain turning its eyes to the customer experience.
But this is not the only reason for a company to redirect its strategy and put the consumer at the center of all its actions.
Hilton Hotels & Resorts is a leader in its segment and, even so, decided to reformulate its loyalty program , similar to the airline miles service, offering new benefits to its customers, based on their real interests.
In this new model, the guest accumulates points and can exchange them for advantages not only on the network, but also on partners.
In other words, just because you already have satisfied customers doesn’t mean you can’t improve their experience and add more value to your brand .
