Everyone seems to be talking about customer centricity these days. Whether it’ssharing great examples of Zappo’s and Amazon’s service, or the disastrous mistakes of aTelecom or Bank, companies are trying to improve. They know it’s important, vital even, for a brand to be successful. So why do so many of them get it wrong?
Here are ten steps to becoming more customer centric that every business can use.
#1. Know your category
This may sound strange, but many brands are not competing in the category in which they think they are. Dried soups are now meal replacements or sauce mixes, and laptops have become entertainment platforms.Review how your customerscompare and choose between options when buying your product or service. This will help you identify your real competitors and the actual category in which you are competing.
#2. Identify your primary target
Knowing who the ideal customer is for each of your brands is the first step to satisfying and hopefully delighting them. Use the BCG Matrix to help select the best group. Review each brand’s target audience and ensure you have information on their Who, What, Where and Why: that is from demographics and usage, to motivations and emotions.
#3. Understand your customers
Personal experience of your customers is essential to putting them at the heart of your business. Everyone in your organisation should have regular contact with the customer, whether by listening in at the call centre, watching market research interviews, or observing customers as they shop and use your product / service.
#4. Know the impact of current trends
Trends don’t provide a competitive advantage unless they are turned into future scenarios. Identify the most relevant trends for your brand and then project them into the future, to develop two axes of uncertainty and four plausible future worlds. These will help you identifyyour business’s future opportunities and challenges.
#5. Reinvent your innovation
Most companies innovate from their current knowledge and skills. Take NPD thinking outside its box, by activating all relevant innovation levers, including, but not limited to, packaging, channels, sourcing, communications, branding and services.
#6. Identify what your brand stands for
Image trends are a great way to be alerted to possible issues before they appear in the sales numbers. Identify the major image attributes of both your own and competitor brands, and measure them regularly.
#7. Work with insight not information
Whilst information and knowledge are essential, it is only when they are turned into understanding and insight that they become useful.Review your insight development process and ensure decisions about customer satisfaction are based on them and not just on data.
#8. Share your knowledge
Companies often spend to gather information that already exists somewhere else in their organisation. Review your business needs and make informationopenly available to everyone who needs it.
#9. Evaluate your progress
Identify the three to five most important areas you want to improve and measure their KPIs consistently. If the numbers aren’t trending upwards, plan remedial actions. The metrics you follow will depend upon your industry, but may include market comparison (shares), availability (distribution or out-of-stock) communications’ impact, competitiveness, or price / value.
#10. Plan for action
Your KPIs are the most important metrics for your business, so plan actions as soon as their trendsslow. Once they start to decline, it is much more difficult to reverse them.
These ten steps should ensure your organisation remains focussed on your customer and doesn’t get lost in the day-to-day issues of the business.
