/ Customer-centric working: explanation, examples and tips
Alexander Wijninga
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5 min
Customer-centric working: it is a phenomenon that more and more companies attach great value to. That is hardly surprising. With both a rise in the number of competitors and high customer expectations, customer-centric working is the key to success. Yet there is a lot of noise around the term ‘customer-centricity’, and it is often confused with ‘customer-friendliness’. In this blog we settle that confusion once and for all, and give you 5 tips that will let you work in a (more) customer-centric way too.
This explanation probably sounds obvious: customer-friendly working has to do with the way you respond to the customer. It is about the attitude you take towards the customer, the level of interest you show and the extent to which you think along with them. So this is largely about the reactive form of customer contact: when the customer comes to you with a complaint or question, and the way you deal with it. This form of customer contact is therefore mostly informative in nature, or offers the customer a short-term solution to their problem. The goal of customer-friendly working is to give the customer a positive feeling about the company, to bind them to your business and to create good word of mouth.
Customer-centric working goes a step further than customer-friendliness. Where customer-friendly working mainly focuses on the reactive form of customer contact, customer-centric working is about anticipation, strategy and a proactive attitude. The focus is on the needs of the customer, however changeable, in every layer of your company. So this goes further than the way a customer service agent responds to a customer with a complaint. It is about successfully translating the wishes, needs and expectations of the customer into the whole customer journey. This is a process with no beginning or end: it is a continuous process.
Ryanair is perhaps not the first name that comes to mind with ‘customer-centric’. When you have bought a ticket, after all, that only covers the seat you sit in: luggage, WiFi, food and coffee all have to be paid for separately. That may not feel customer-centric, but in doing this Ryanair has in fact listened to its target audience. These are people who want to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, and who will therefore settle for a seat alone. Paying more for a ticket in order to get all sorts of luxury extras strikes them as unnecessary. Ryanair also listens to the feedback its audience gives, and new routes are mapped out, more luggage options are offered and you can change your own seat. Customer-centricity therefore does not by definition have to mean luxury or an optimised product or service. Mainly it means: listening to your customer, and taking that as the guideline for optimisation. By embracing this strategy, Ryanair's profit rose by 32% in a single year.
Customer-centricity forms the basis of Starbucks's strategy. Former CEO Howard Schultz even said that he sees the coffee chain as the ‘third place’ for everyone. What does he mean by that? The first place is home, the second place is work, and Starbucks should be the third place. They carry this line of thinking through in all sorts of ways. The branches have to have a relaxed living-room atmosphere, the service has to be personal and staff are encouraged to recognise loyal customers (and their favourite order). Customer-centricity is deeply rooted in the company's culture.
Customer-centric working is a must. Why? In short, it comes down to the following. By making customer-centric working a priority, customer-friendliness rises as well. Customer-centric working over the long term is, after all, experienced in the short term as customer-friendly. Customer-friendliness in turn creates loyalty, and more loyalty among your customers produces a rise in profit. Research indicates that, when the customer has a positive experience with a purchase, 92% of consumers choose the same company again next time. With a negative experience that figure falls to 11% (source). Research also shows that, when customer retention rises by 5%, profit quickly increases by 25% to 90% (S. Chambers, 2020). On top of that, 86% of consumers say they are willing to spend more money when they get a good customer experience in return.
So how do you actually do it, working in a customer-centric way? Below we describe 5 tips that will let you work more customer-centrically!
It is one of the golden rules on which customer-friendliness is based: availability. In 2021 especially, it is hugely important that you are both reachable and available. That means not only being available from 9 to 5, and not only being reachable by telephone. Today's customer has become used to a company responding outside office hours as well. The customer will also look up in frustration when a message via WhatsApp or Facebook is not possible; those are the channels they themselves prefer to use. It is therefore important to anticipate the customer's needs when it comes to contact with your company.
Would you still take a message seriously that begins with “Dear Sir/Madam”? You are at the very least likely to stop reading sooner than when a message begins with “Good afternoon”, followed by your first name. Sincere engagement is therefore an important aspect of customer-centric working. Know who the customer is, listen to the customer, show that you are thinking along with them and are happy to take them a step further. A personal approach is unavoidable here, as is the order and conversation history.
Who is your customer, and what does your customer need? You can only work in a customer-centric way once you can answer these questions straight away. Only then can you uncover the customer's needs. Map out all the complaints, for example, and try to draw a line through the common problems. How can you avoid them in future, and how can you adapt your strategy accordingly?
Once you have mapped the customer and the customer journey properly, that is not the end of the line for customer-centric working. Keep improving the customer journey and customer experience by asking for feedback. Through surveys within your customer service you stay well informed about the experience the customer has with your company, and you can respond to any changes or trends. By applying this, you can continuously optimise your customer experience.
Measuring is knowing: make sure, therefore, that you can map the customer experience properly through statistics. Which channel is used most for your customer service? What are the peak moments, and what does that say about your customer? What does the customer most often run into, and what does that say about your customer's needs? Keep extensive statistics, and learn more about your customer that way.
Customer service software can give insight into your customer's wishes and needs, so that you can anticipate them. Customer profiles, statistics and an overview of several channels in one platform let you work in a more customer-centric way. Watermelon's platform can help you with that! Would you rather know a bit more about chatbots and the cases in which they can be deployed? Then request the whitepaper!
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