Best Practices to Excel at Customer Centricity

Customer centricity is not a new idea. Its foundation principles were set with the expansion of the digital era, and it has since continued to grow with demanding customer expectations.

Any modern business that wants to excel at customer centricity will be subject to constant change, adopting new trends and ideas, and implementing underlying customer principles.

To invest in CX is more important now than ever before.

However, customer-centricity principles are often reduced to the simplistic idea that “the customer is always right”. When in fact, this practice is far more complex and challenges business mindsets and operations.

In this article, we’ll cover the basics of the best practices of customer-centricity and give you valuable advice to build the right culture for your business to prosper.

Why Is Customer Centricity Important?

Research shows that customer-centric companies have a better chance of surviving an economic downturn. Customer centricity helps you build trust and loyalty with your customers, offering a solid position when encountering business difficulties.

Let’s explore some of the best practices that put your customer at the heart of your business.

Brand Image

Customer-centric companies are seen as more innovative and successful, they expand more rapidly and can provide better products and services than their competition.

If you develop a culture focused on your customer’s success, not your own, you are more connected to your audience. Creating long-term relationships helps you stay at the forefront of your industry, reacting quickly to customer demands due to your ability to listen to customer feedback.

Anticipating customer needs allows you to drive change and adapt easier, stepping up your game and launching new products and services.

Customer perception is how customers feel about your brand and products. Their opinion is formed through every customer interaction they’ve had with your company.

These interactions can be direct or indirect. And a customer perception can easily be described in one word. It could be progressive, cheap, reliable, useful, amazing, ground-breaking, etc.

Any of these words can define you, so which one would you like to be seen as? Once you know how you’d like to be perceived by your customers, plan to get there.

Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty starts with anticipating customer needs. There are tons of examples from famous entrepreneurs who listened to what customers had to say first, then build the very thing they wanted.

One example is Steve Jobs, whose vision pushed the limits on what people wanted in the future, creating the iPhone, iPad, and Model X – and building companies estimated $2.69 trillion.

With the ever-changing customer demands, successful leaders always have their ears bent to hear the voice of the customers while looking ahead to the future, planning new ideas, and anticipating trends.

Receiving what they are asking for, the customer feels appreciated and valued. They are more willing to spend more with your company and advocate other prospects that they chose you over the competition.

For example, 96% of customers say customer service is important in their choice of loyalty to a brand. Improving CX by gathering customer feedback and acting on it is crucial.

Customers will always find reasons to complain or to praise. In this aspect, their imagination never fails. A core part of retaining loyal customers is to give them reasons to praise you. A few ideas that you can implement to succeed in this are:

• Improving customer experience
• Personalize communications
• Invest in marketing loyalty programs
• Gather customer feedback

Better Value

Customer centricity can directly impact how much customers are willing to pay for what you have to offer. If you implement any of the strategies mentioned above, then you can increase the perceived value of your products and services for each new customer.

Customer-centric brands offering a great customer experience will have long-lasting customer relationships. Creating an effective customer experience doesn’t refer only to delivering products or services in a timely and efficient manner.

It’s about all the customer touchpoints that you have been creating for your customers through text messaging, chat conversations, calls, social media, emails, and automated customer support.

VoiceSage helps companies understand and capture the value of effective customer engagement through mobile messaging solutions to gain a competitive advantage and become a customer-centric brand.

For instance, companies that lead in customer experience outperform laggards by nearly 80%.

Offer Great Products or Services

At the end of the day, the most important customer-centricity principle that companies should deliver is great products and services.

According to Mindtheprouduct, good products have a solid value proposition and solve a real problem, be understandable by users, perform their tasks as easily and efficiently as possible, and become better and harder to part with the more they are used.

These characteristics are built upon one another, each feature making the other one shine.

So, you see, a customer-centric company thinks about every aspect of the products they deliver and the interactions they make with customers. Sure, you will find challenges in becoming a customer-centric company along the way.

When building a customer-centric culture, everyone in the company needs to be on the same page regarding the importance of making the customer experience successful.

How Can VoiceSage Help You Become a Customer-Centric Company

To build a customer-centric company, you have to be clear about your brand promise and consistently deliver on the promise.

VoiceSage can help you deliver exceptional customer interactions through engaging messaging channels like Rich Media Messaging which helps you personalize conversations.

Another important thing is increasing operational efficiency by automating customer support so that you always deliver the quickest and most valuable help to your customer 24/7.

Creating touchpoints isn’t the easiest thing when you are missing a powerful communication platform. Localize all your outbound interactions into a single inbox and start delivering the best customer-centric messaging that you can.

Interested to find out more? Book a demo today and we’ll show you around our platform and use cases.