In order to be customer-centric, you need employees that truly embrace your strategy. Hiring based on attitude and values is one way to do this.
Customer-centric companies value empathy and communication skills in their hiring process. They are also more likely to implement a Product-Led Growth model. Think Dropbox, Slack, and Calendly.
1. Invest in Customer Insights
Putting customers front and center has become the most effective way to build brand loyalty. Aside from being good business sense, it also creates a happier workplace.
One way to do this is to invest in customer insights that are shared with the entire organization. This enables everyone to think like a customer – whether they’re the CS agent fielding a call, the designer working on an app interface or the developer prototyping new products.
Another way to operationalize customer centricity is to make it a core value. By putting it at the top of the list, you’re committing to your leadership, team and customers that it is a priority for your company. This creates a framework that can guide the decisions of your whole team, from product managers to designers to researchers. It also encourages employees to embrace the change and support the vision. This allows them to drive more innovative and successful solutions that will delight customers.
2. Create a Customer-Centric Culture
Customer-centricity isn’t just a marketing or sales tactic – it’s an entire company philosophy that needs to be woven into the fabric of your business. The best way to do that is to make it a core value so that it shines through every interaction with your team and customers.
When a company makes this core value a priority, they prioritize strategies that create positive experiences for their customers. They’re focused on anticipating the customer’s needs, communication preferences, and satisfaction goals. They build products that are tailored to their audience and deliver services that keep them coming back.
The most successful companies are ones that have made customer-centricity a central part of their brand identity. By incorporating this philosophy into their culture, these brands see increased brand loyalty, more referrals, higher revenue, and even a price premium on their products.
3. Create a Customer-Centric Environment
In order to implement a customer-centric strategy, a company needs to create a culture that promotes the values and priorities of that approach. This starts at the top, with senior leadership making a clear commitment to this goal and then actively seeking out the best talent to help them achieve it.
It also means promoting customer-centric values at all levels of the organization, including marketing and sales, product development, support, and everything in between. Putting customers first will result in brand loyalty and repeat purchases, which ultimately saves companies money on customer acquisition costs.
For example, a customer-centric company might create in-product engagements that speak to the reason a user signed up for their service like Citrix did when they created personalized onboarding messaging in their free trial version of ShareFile. This helped lift adoption and keep users engaged with their new product features. It could also mean adding screenshot bug reports to Jira or incorporating visual feedback collected with tools like Usersnap into Slack so that teams are constantly in touch with their customer’s perspectives.
4. Invest in Your Employees
Most customer-centric companies have a profound belief that the customer should be front and center in all they do. From defining processes, strategic direction, hiring, and more, the impact on customers is a core component of every decision that is made.
Those teams who truly believe in customer-centricity are self-aware and understand the impact of their actions. They take great pride in delivering exceptional service to their customers and peers. They actively recruit and bring in top talent that will be customer focused and create an authentic service environment within the organization.
Creating a culture that puts the customer at the heart of everything is not easy and it takes time for everyone to move toward this goal. It requires new behaviors from all employees and leaders, and it may require some of the toughest decisions. Putting customer-centricity at the forefront of your company values is a big move and sends a strong message about how important it is to your team and your business.