Are you enabling your clients to be more customer-centric? Though most businesses would nod and say ‘yes’ the truth is only 14% of marketers can confidently say their company really focuses on customer-centricity. Placing the customer at the core of the business can help your clients build loyalty, fuel retention, and pave the way for sustained growth. In fact, companies that have successfully implemented a customer-centric strategy are 60% more profitable than companies that aren’t.
Why then do so many companies struggle to get customer-centricity right? In this post, we will talk about how to effectively implement a customer-centric strategy that fuels growth for your clients.
How customers influence prospects
It’s simple, prospects trust customers more than your clients’ brand.
That’s why location-based businesses are beginning to invest heavily in experience marketing solutions. According to Gartner, companies that successfully implement customer experience marketing projects begin by focusing on how they collect and analyze customer feedback.
If your clients understand their customers they’ll be more effective in delivering positive experiences, and happy customers help to grow revenue. In fact, 73% of companies with above-average customer experience perform better financially than their competitors. The first step to generating this type of growth is to break down internal data silos.
Break down data silos
Breaking down data silos requires identifying processes that contribute to it – fragmented data tracking. Fragmented data is frequently cited as a roadblock to delivering positive customer experiences. 47% of customer experience executives indicated that data silos are hurting their digital customer experience initiatives.
Providing your clients with the right tools will help them commit to an audit of each department’s data management systems, data collection, and reporting methods. Then, identifying barriers between departments becomes scalable
Once barriers have been identified, your clients can implement data democratization within their business. Data democratization simply means that everybody has access to data – there are no gatekeepers. This empowers everyone in the business to use data in their decision-making process and fosters interdepartmental collaboration.
Additionally, the ability to instantly access and understand data translates into faster decision-making. Those teams will have a competitive advantage over slower siloed businesses.
However, this can’t be done without customizable analytics tools capable of desegregating and connecting previously siloed data, making it manageable from one place. In the context of customer-centricity, your clients will want to be able to filter customer feedback data and visualizations based on channels, type, location and more (reviews, survey responses, etc.).
Such tools must make it simple for all employees to consume data quickly and easily. This will help your clients seamlessly pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, address issues in the customer experience, and identify brand ambassadors to potentially collaborate with.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
Collaborating with loyal customers to create content is one of the most effective methods to driving conversions. As mentioned earlier, prospects trust other customers more than they trust your client. It’s no surprise that 88% of consumers trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts.
The great thing about UGC is its diversity. It can be as basic as reviews and case studies or it can take the form of guest blog posts, social posts, and webinars that spotlight ideal customers.
Your clients can partner with highly engaged, satisfied customers to create content and incentivize them with unique benefits. Here are some quick ideas to get you started:
- Incentivize customers to create and share their own content promoting your clients
- Ask customers to be guest bloggers
- Ask customers to co-host webinars
- Create educational videos featuring customers who are experienced on certain topics
- Create social posts that celebrate loyal customers
Conclusion
Now that you’re aware of the moving parts of a customer-centric business strategy, it’s time to get started. If you’re already working on removing any friction from the buyer journey and enhancing the customer experience, then you’ve taken a step in the right direction.
If you’re new to the concept, you may need to adjust and modify your approach. By keeping customers’ needs and preferences in mind as you help your clients refine customer service and execute campaigns, you’ll be able to grow opportunities to foster loyalty and boost the bottom line.
