The customer-centric culture. It is essential for today’s business but what is it exactly? If you want to be an up and coming company that sets itself apart from others, you’ll want to get in on this practice. Even if your product is fantastic, that doesn’t necessarily mean people are going to resonate with your business. You must earn growth and it needs to be done with careful consideration.
Maybe you’ve noticed that some B2B customers will say their suppliers or vendors are partners. This is what customers expect out of the people they purchase from now. Someone who cares just as much about their business as they do. That is the sort of message you must send them. If you really want to excel in your business, you need to say out loud what your customers are thinking. This will take some work on your part. You will want to be committed to customer-centricity, be innovative, and be good to your employees so your clients will experience consistency.
If you want to reach your customer base on a broad spectrum, you’ll want to incorporate the following:
• Analyze the efficacy of your business and share the benefits and proof you find.
• Research that is both biased and unbiased.
• If possible, meet your customers in person. You can do video calls if your business is based online.
• You should have insights on things that you likely don’t want to focus on but are essential to your growth.
These customer-centric approaches bring you close to your clients and allow you develop great relationships with them at the same time.
Surveys for Insight
It’s important to know what your customers need from you. This allows you to create a better product or service. You find out what their challenges are. Surveys will often ask customers what their short- and long-term plans are. This then gives you plenty of time to create the roadmap in your business that will meet their needs later. You’ll probably be surprised at what they have to say.
Do be warned however that surveys are considered biased. People that have developed a business relationship with you are likely going to be kind and not offer constructive criticism to the degree you need it for advancement. There are ways you can ask questions that makes someone more likely to be honest.
Roundtables for Qualitative Research
It’s a good idea to invite the top customers you work with into your facility or take your executives to meet with customers. What you want out of these meetings is to set up a long-term roadmap. Listen to every word they say. Some of their buzzwords could be quite valuable for SEO later down the road. Find out what they feel is missing in your product/service. Ask them what you could do better. Find out the trends they are investing in right now. This will allow you to understand what it would take to have them as long-term clients.
Listen to the Social Buzz
Check out tweets and posts from conversations buzzing around on social media. This is where you’re going to get the invaluable unbiased opinion. If they are talking about your brand, it’s great to get insight this way. They are saying how they really feel on social media. Even conversations regarding your industry are helpful. These conversations on social media let you know where people’s heads are really at. What their grievances are and what they want/need.
There are tools that allow you to more easily and efficiently listen in on these conversations. Through the analyzation these tools can do, you’ll learn who is influencing your industry and how. You’ll get in on the lingo and terminology that is being used too so you’ll learn how to speak the language of your customer.
Data Analysis
All types of data are essential to getting to know what your customers needs really are. While first-party customer data is widely used, going deeper will give you far more insight. Data that directly relate to your company. You can look through your website data as well as your POS. Data helps you to see why you might be losing your market share. You can find out when and where it fails you as well. You can then use this data to pinpoint the segments you aren’t doing so well in and where you’re thriving in terms of customers.
Big data is the future and it’s important to get to know it. Your competitors will eventually be utilizing it. Why not get ahead of the pack by starting today? There are tools that help you get the data you need such as customer management platforms.
Get Feedback Through Forms
Make sure that any time a customer is touching upon your business, there is the opportunity to gain feedback from them. When you invite customers to give you feedback, you not only get valuable information on their experience, but they feel relevant. Getting feedback is the actionable way to really be customer-centric. You want to know how they’re feeling all the time. Asking for feedback at every touchpoint gives you such valuable data for making your customer experience the best it can be. You can collect the date, analyze it, and constantly be better for your customers. When you improve their complaints, they feel that they’re important to you.
You can use feedback forms on your website, on display ads, social media pages etc.
There are so many people out there trying to be an entrepreneur at this point. It’s important that you deeply know your customer base and let them know how important they are to you. This culture of being customer-centric is what people expect. If you want to keep up, you’ll have to adopt it. It’s exciting to get your company brand and marketing strategies so strategic that it starts to show results in your sales.
Customers become passionate about your business and that feels good too. Follow these practices to get to know your customers and what they want from you.