They say that a win for customers is a win for the company. In other words, without satisfied customers, the business would fail. That is why customer service is something every business owner takes seriously, whether you’re managing a large corporation or a small business. Customers play a vital role in how businesses operate. Their purchase decisions affect how brands should facilitate customer experience, marketing efforts, and sales funnel.
At first glance, a good customer experience is easy to achieve. Just focus on customers and make their needs and desires the center of your business strategy. In reality, a customer-centric approach involves an intentional and ongoing approach at every organizational level. For example, the IT department takes charge of the technical aspects of the customer experience. To ensure seamless communication lines, IT teams rely on the IP PBX system, customer data platforms, and other digital tools to deliver better customer service.
Whatever industry you’re in, human interactions are becoming more impactful and critical in a world that’s becoming less personal. A customer-centric mantra won’t be enough unless you know how to apply them the right way. With that in mind, here are ways to apply a customer-centric strategy to your business.
Listen to customers
If you want to put customers first and make decisions based on their needs, it only makes sense to understand first who they are and their expectations.
The first step is to establish all-hands support by building an internal culture solely for tracking customer satisfaction. But this doesn’t mean that only support agents are responsible for whatever users think. A customer-centric strategy will fail if it depends solely on client-facing employees. You’ll only reap the benefits of good customer experience if you establish a customer-first mindset across sales, IT, and marketing teams.
Promote all-hands support throughout your company by training employees to switch tasks to maximize productivity and know customers better. For example, the manager can also function as the cashier to accommodate other customers while the staff is taking a break. There’s no problem with working at the counter now and then.
By appointing different teams to assist clients, everyone can listen and understand what clients want and think.
Go digital
During the COVID-19 pandemic, homes have become the epicenter of leisure, work, education, and shopping. This means that digital spaces, such as mobile applications, social media, and e-commerce platforms, have partially replaced brick-and-mortar establishments. Therefore, data has become the key advantage and resource for IT teams, where almost every sales funnel involves online self-service platforms.
As more people recognize the convenience and benefits of digital platforms, many now prefer online interactions. This is evident in the number of sales being closed through live chats and video conferencing compared to phone calls.
In a tech-driven world, the ideal salesperson is no longer the smooth-talking seller but someone who is tech- and data-savvy across various digital communication platforms. Marketing should no longer focus on making sales but on customers’ buying behaviors. Having unprecedented data access will help businesses become a good purchase advisor for clients.
Analytics, tooling, and big data are high-value IT assets in customer experience. These tools will help entrepreneurs identify service improvements, determine SWOT points, automate customer service, and create strategies based on real-time data.
Sales and marketing strategies will be more effective and relevant using client insights collected from support channels, social media, and digital surveys. Through gathered data, you can use advanced analytics to push targeted sales strategically.
Understand the buyer persona
It’s difficult to create a customer-first strategy without knowing the buyer persona. This approach will help you understand who your customers are, their needs, and how to help them achieve their goals. Having a broad view of the customer experience will allow you to build essential guidelines and policies to enhance your customer service. Whatever information you acquire will help you create a plan on how to respond to clients’ needs.
Next is to monitor customer metrics. You can only identify your business as customer service-oriented if you know how to manage certain customer metrics. These involve everything from brand awareness, churn rate, and purchasing behavior.
Start by thinking of a general idea. Decide about your target client and the industry they’re most engaged in. Conducting a market resource will help you focus on critical areas, such as lifestyle, demographics, product preferences, and education.
A customer-first mindset involves all the training, the right attitude, and the reason behind the efforts to bring a worthwhile customer experience. In the end, your customers won’t be happy without great customer service. In this case, embracing a customer-centric approach will help you know their desires and needs before they even ask.