Company culture plays a big role in determining the direction of your business. If you don’t take the time to develop a culture, your business will likely become stagnant as it lacks direction. On the other hand, if you develop a culture that’s focused on providing the best possible experience for customers while also maximizing productivity, this is likely what you’ll achieve.
One element you should focus on when developing your company culture is customer-centricity. Customer centricity refers to the process of considering what might provide a better experience for your customers in virtually every aspect of your business. According to one study, businesses with a better customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue, making this a worthwhile goal to pursue.
Below, we’ll outline some steps you can take if you want to build a more customer-centric culture within your business.
Assess Your Current Culture
Before you can develop a customer centric strategy, you need to know where you’re starting from. Take the time to analyze your business and see where your current strengths and weaknesses lie. You can do this by sending out some surveys to your customers and to your employees. Some questions you want to be answered include:
- How do customers rate their experience with us?
- What do customers like about working with us?
- What do customers not like about working with us?
- Do our employees feel motivated at work each day?
- What do our employees enjoy most about their job with us?
- What would our customers and employees say our company values are?
Learning more about how your customers and employees view you can help you understand your current culture. This is especially useful if you have not put a concentrated effort into establishing a company culture before. Once you know more about your starting point, you’ll have a better idea as to what you need to fix to become more customer-centric.
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Adjust Your Mission Statement
A great place to start building your customer-centric culture is in your mission statement. Your mission statement tells your employees and your customers what you are trying to achieve. It also can state your values and why you are running this business.
It’s a great opportunity to discuss things like how you strive to deliver the best possible customer experience. Updating your mission statement is a great way to set a new tone and let your employees know you are making some changes.
Change Your Customer Interactions
The biggest adjustment you’ll likely need to make is how you interact with your customers. What you want to do is change your mindset from interacting with your customers to forming relationships with them. Whenever you talk with your customers – whether it’s through a blog post, an email, over the phone, on your website, or through live chat support – you want to focus on building a relationship with them. Make your goal to learn more about them and their needs, rather than just looking at them as numbers to convert.
Changing your mindset in this regard leads to changes throughout your business. Now your customer service representatives will spend more time with customers, which will lead to stronger retention rates. You’ll also spend more time creating online content, but you’ll find that it converts better. Becoming more customer-centric takes an investment of both time and resources but the benefits are worth it.
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Ask for Customer Feedback
Finally, as you begin to make changes throughout your organization, spend more time following up with your customers. See if your changes are working and what else you still need to work on.
Customer feedback is your most valuable resource when it comes to adopting a more customer-centric culture. Make it a regular practice to interview select customers or to gather opinions through customer surveys.
Develop Your Strategy Today
A customer-centric culture can provide a lot of benefits to any organization. When your business pays more attention to its customers, you’ll likely find that you generate more repeat customers and more traffic via word of mouth.
Shifting your entire company culture can take some time, so it’s important to start as soon as possible. Start by considering which aspects of your business could be improved, and then begin implementing changes that place the customer at the center of all your decisions.