What does customer-centric mean? Five tips for your business

Brands that take extra measures to make customers feel heard and understood during every encounter (from web copy to email drips to service interactions) foster a customer-oriented approach throughout the entire customer journey. The more customer-centric an organization is, the more likely it is to establish a larger customer base with loyal clients who spread positive word of mouth and refer their friends and family to the products and services the business offers. 

The key to driving customer centricity throughout your brand is to make it a habit to consider the impact decisions will have on your customers across all your departments. An organization that fails to think of its customers first is destined to fail as they will build the wrong products, invest in subpar resources and fail to meet customer service standards. 

When team members across all departments listen to and consider customer needs, companies build products and services that meet or exceed customer expectations. The more you ingrain this mindset into your entire organization, the stronger customer experience you deliver. 

Here are five ways to ensure your business is delivering a customer-centric experience.

Build a customer-centric view into your core values

Like most things, starting from the inside makes ideas easier to implement and practice. Including a customer-focused core value in your mission statement helps your entire team remain focused on staying customer-obsessed. Preach this concept to your leadership, your team, and your customers so you can hold your business accountable for delivering. When deciding on a new feature or launching a partnership, ask if the decision is in the best interest of your customers. At Tethr, each of our values speak directly to the experience we strive to provide to our customers.

Be sure your marketing team is aligned on the concept

Are customers a part of a company's marketing message? They should be. Strategies such as inbound marketing, customer advocacy and customer-first point-of-views in content helps marketing teams give relevant content to prospects and clients so that they can more easily promote your business themselves. Marketing teams should stay closely connected to the product and sales teams to get insights on what’s coming up and the things customers want to learn more about. 

Get your sales team on board

Customer-centric selling is never focused on the company or the sales rep's needs, but tailored to the needs and desires of prospects and customers. This requires a proactive approach from sales reps as they are better off actively sharing helpful content and demos than they are to wait for customers to ask for it. It’s critical for your sales and marketing teams to have a close relationship so sales reps can request content from marketing as they see needs arise, and marketing teams can deliver content to sales based on what they’re seeing in the market.

Predict customer needs

Customers can typically provide an account of what they want or need, but they aren’t usually thinking too far out in the horizon. They rely on businesses to do that work for them. Your departments should all work together to anticipate needs and direct them as solutions to your customer base. Looking out for your customers in the long term shows that your organization does its research and that your team cares.

Collect customer feedback

Regular communication with your customers is an obvious but important aspect of gauging their satisfaction. Adjust your product roadmap in accordance with the feedback you receive from surveys and conversations keeps businesses honest. Low survey responses? That’s normal in a world where we are constantly bombarded with survey requests. Use Tethr to eliminate the need of the post-call survey for good.

What does it mean to be customer-centric?

Customers today usually prefer to solve problems on their own before they resort to calling for help. It’s not uncommon for customers to believe a customer service agent will get it wrong, which is another reason to ensure your call center agents are making the customer experience simple, efficient and painless. Providing easily accessible resources that allow customers to figure out problems on their own without having to reach out to your business for support is essential if retaining customers is really a part of your strategy.

Never abandon your customers after making a sale. Ensure your customers are getting the most out of your products and services by setting up a stellar onboarding process. Since all customers have unique needs, a personalized process tailored to the particular customer makes all the difference.