The customer is the heart of the business. Providing your clients with excellent experiences creates loyalty. A community of loyal clients who appreciate your service and are engaged with your company is a valuable asset in your business. It will make your company better each day, you will get referrals, awesome reviews and increase sales.
So how do we go about providing those awesome experiences?
A holistic approach
The problem isn’t always the problem. Having a customer-centric strategy means that your whole business, every part of it, is dedicated to the customer. Every decision within the business is made with the customer in mind. So it isn’t about fixing just customer service, it is a change of mindset in the business culture.
Understand who is involved in the process. Each area of your company will have its role to play in creating a customer-centric business. Understanding how each part must function together and who are responsible people for each step is essential in creating a plan to implement this new strategy.
The whole team needs to get involved. You need to create a customer-centric culture within your company, and that means everyone that works inside it must engage in this new mindset. Every single team member needs to have in mind that the customer is the number one priority.
Where are the clients now?
Surveys or conversations are one way to understand how your clients feel about your business right now. Communicating with your clients and assessing their needs, likes and dislikes about your business is how you start figuring out where you can do better. Your clients are the best people to tell you how they want to be served.
How do you measure your client’s engagement with your company? There are so many ways to connect with your clients nowadays. Social media, chats, phone calls, email, In-app messages… Being easily available for your clients is central to providing quality customer service. Surveys, launch user tests and even direct calls can help you measure clients’ engagement and satisfaction with your business.
Listen to their needs. Your company exists to fulfill a need your clients have. That being said they are the ones who know what they need. If someone walks into a shop asking for strawberries they don’t want you to hand them bananas, even if you think bananas are better. Listening to your client’s needs is essential for providing them with excellent service.
What is a Client-Centric Strategy?
It is a strategy that puts the customer’s needs at the centre of the buying process. It is the idea of building your business structure from the perspective of what is best for your clients. For every decision that is made, the customer’s perspective must always be taken into consideration.
A Client-centric company is geared to help the customer achieve their goals. Customer satisfaction is regarded as the priority through every stage of the client’s relationship with the business. From the moment you catch their attention, to after the service/product they bought got delivered.
The main idea of a client-centric strategy is to create client loyalty and referrals. It is much easier to sell to someone who is already a client than to a new customer. Therefore, creating client loyalty can greatly improve your results. Moreover, referrals and reviews are becoming increasingly important in a world where you can easily type a company’s name into Google to see what previous clients have to say about it.
Client-Centric Culture
Build a culture that makes it easy for everyone on the team to participate. In order to have a client-centric company, you can’t have only your customer service team or your sales team focused on that. Your whole company has to be client-centric. When you create an environment where everyone can participate and engage in this client-centric culture you and your clients start to see really amazing results.
A client-centric business has to have a balance between a top-down and bottom-up approach. The client’s needs are always discussed and valued, so the team members who are directly in contact with clients must be heard and encouraged to get feedback and give their opinions. The team leaders and CEOs, on the other hand, have to serve as models and provide the team members with the tools to continually improve their customer service skills.
Build a team of people who believe in the client-centric culture. From the very first time you meet prospective team members have your customer needs in mind, set that as a priority. Hire people who are customer-oriented. Give customer service training! Make sure your team knows how to communicate, how to be flexible, make your clients comfortable and how to receive and implement feedback.
Feedback from clients
Conduct exit interviews. Assessing your client’s impressions right at the end of the service can get you some fresh insights from how they felt while dealing with your company. You can learn what they liked, what they missed and what they would like next time they purchase a service from you.
Reach out after the work is done. Reaching out a little later, making sure they enjoyed what they received will make them feel valued and ensure they feel that your company cares about their experience. It can also help you see what impression you a creating in the longer-term. Their memory isn’t as fresh as in an exit interview, you can find out what stuck out in their mind.
How likely are they to recommend to you? This is extremely important. Internet reviews are very common and easily accessible today that they are making a huge impact on whether or not you get new customers. Knowing how likely your clients are to recommend you and what you could do to increase that likelihood can highly help you take action that will increase your results.
Would you like to create this type of strategy inside your business? I would love to have a conversation with you to see if I can help! Lets chat!
