“We’re not competitor obsessed; we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs, and we work backwards.” – Jeff Bezos.
Jeff Bezos recognized early in his entrepreneurial journey that customer experience was at the heart of every strong company. His understanding of the importance of giving customers what they needed enabled him to build one of the world’s largest and most trusted companies.
While we can’t all become the next Amazon, we can take note of Amazon’s strengths and use that to build a customer journey that brings people back to us again and again.
In this article, we’ll look at exemplary customer service and how to implement customer-friendly processes into your everyday workflow.
What Are Customer-Centric Strategies?
Think about why you love your favorite brands. Your first thought might be about the quality of their product or service. While a good product is essential, other factors are at play.
Dig deeper into your experience. A little reflection will reveal that your love for the brand has as much to do with how that product or service makes you feel as the quality of the item or service.
If your list includes things like feeling valued, listened to, honesty and integrity, you’re getting to the heart of what makes good customer service (and customer-centric).
The main components of a customer-centric strategy tend to include the following:
- Understanding what your customer wants and needs and then providing it.
- Relationships and communication are crucial. Treat your customers in the way you would a good friend or trusted colleague. Build a relationship of mutual respect.
- Metrics – Monitoring customer feedback and acting on it.
- Agility – Building the ability to respond fast when things go wrong.
Key Steps to Implementing a Customer-Centric Strategy
Implementing the right customer-centric strategy starts with understanding your customers’ needs. Ensuring customers have a clear way to give you feedback is often enough.
Contacting your head office should be simple, so have a contact email and phone number on your website. Monitor social media and respond quickly to messages. Survey your customers, analyze results and act on them. Newsletters can also be easily personalized, providing another route for customers to contact you.
Other things to consider when building a customer-focused business include:
- Tailor your products and services to fit individual customer needs. What are they asking for? Can you provide what they need? Look at every aspect of your offer and consider it through your customers’ eyes.
- Ensure a smooth and satisfying customer journey. Don’t make working with you complicated. From the moment a customer contacts you, they should be able to get the information they need quickly. Accessing your products and services should be as seamless as possible.
- Ensure that every interaction with the customer is consistently excellent. This may involve training for staff and reevaluating your everyday processes. If any internal process is overly long or complicated, think about how you can simplify it, you may find that simplification has the knock-on effect of making the customer journey more pleasant.
- Have a complaints process that people talk about because it’s so good. In reality, things will go wrong, so build a complaint resolution process that works in the customers’ favor.
The Future of Customer-Centric Strategies
Customer service is evolving. Putting your customer first ensures you build a reputation for customer excellence; consequently, people will return to you repeatedly. This goes for giants like Amazon but also for the small septic, sewer and portable restroom contractors businesses.
Customer-centric strategies don’t have to be expensive. Taking the time to look at your business from your customer’s point of view will reward you in the long term.
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