- January 29, 2019
- Posted by: sandra
- Category: Business
Many people confuse customer centricity with customer service but don’t worry, we will explain the differences. No matter what type of business you have, you can profit from focusing more on your customers! Understanding your target audience and their behaviors is key for a customer-centric company because it influences every decision: from strategy to product delivery. Keep reading to learn how customer centricity can skyrocket your business and what Persist Digital Agency can do to help on your path to business success!
First things first.
What is customer centricity?
Customer Centricity and Customer Service: What is the Difference?
Table of Contents
The terms seem very similar, but you would be wrong to assume they are the same. While we are all familiar with customer service, most likely being on the giving and receiving end at one point in our lives, customer centricity is something a lot of businesses tend to neglect or misunderstand.
Let’s start with the definition. Peter Fader, of Wharton Univeristy of Pennsylvania, defines customer centricity as:
‘a strategy that aligns a company’s development and delivery of its products and services with the current and future needs of a select set of customers in order to maximize their long-term financial value to the firm.’
Here is the distinction between customer service and centricity. Customer service will be equally applied to every ‘nameless, faceless customer’ and will no doubt bring a big plus to every company, but a customer-centric business will make a distinction between its customers based on the information they gather about their previous visits, purchases, and total customer lifetime value.
Was this distinction familiar to you before reading this article?
Product Centricity vs Customer Centricity
Most companies today are product-centric. That means that their profits are increased through volume and market share which they get either by expanding into new markets (demographic, geographic) or by upgrading an existing product. (We are looking at you, Apple). Even stores like Walmart and Costco which can offer just about anything and at a very low price, are product-centric. Their sales depend on the number of products they sell, and they sell a lot. But do they know their customers, their unique characteristics and behaviors? Are they maximizing the amount that they can earn from each individual who shops at their store? The answer according to Fader is no.
Is your business product-centric or customer-centric right now?
How Can Customer Centricity Help You Grow Your Business?
Whether you’re a marketing agency, kitchen showroom or any other type of business, you can benefit from customer centricity. We are all familiar with CRM or Customer Relationship Management. In the olden days we had index cards, now we have software! Living in the age of the internet and social media makes gathering information about our customers so much easier. The mistake we make is — we don’t use this data!
Peter Fader perfectly sums up what customer centricity is all about:
an acknowledgment that not all customers are created equal.
Shocking, but true.
Sifting through data, we can group our customers appropriately and create marketing strategies that will be more efficient. We can also determine which customers have a bigger lifetime value and invest more to retain them, while also calculating how much it costs to acquire new customers. By understanding our select set of customers, we can deliver precisely what they want, ensuring their loyalty and a stable future for our company.
How Can Persist Digital Help
Persist Digital puts an emphasis on personal and professional growth of every employee in our various areas of interest. And while we are all uniquely skilled individuals, we have one thing in common: we are obsessed with our customers (but not in a creepy way, we promise)!
One of the mistakes we’ve mentioned before is that businesses don’t actually get to know their customers. With Persist, that is not the case. Our goal is to learn your story, understand your goals and to discover the best way to target your customers.
As a digital marketing agency, we want to get the whole picture and use customer data to capture insights and get to the bottom of their needs. For most customers, that means an easy and convenient experience while purchasing the products they want. We can help you improve not just your customer service, but the way you do business entirely! Together we can build a strategy focused on the customer that will develop products and services around their needs. We will build relationships and actually listen to you and your target audience. By maintaining a very real and personal conversation and feedback, with the help of social media, we can make sure that the clients are fully satisfied with your business.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a truly customer-centric business will:
- Gather information to understand their customers’ needs
- Base their product/service creation on gathered information
- Offer amazing customer service and reward customer loyalty
- Make sure to listen and maintain a real and personal conversation with their customers
- Ensure an easy and convenient experience for the customer
Persist Digital has embraced customer centricity from the very beginning. We invest a lot of effort into understanding our clients and their customers. By analyzing data across all channels, we try to make the best-informed decisions and strategies to deliver awesome results. So yes, we truly are obsessed with our customers! 🙂
After reading this article, tell us, is your business truly customer-centric?