Customer centricity, this is a journey and not a destination

Aligning the resources of your organization to effectively respond to the ever-changing needs of the customer, while building mutually profitable relationships.

You can break that definition down into three parts:

1. Aligning the resources of your organization

2. Effectively respond to the ever-changing needs of the customer

3. Building mutually profitable relationships

Customer centricity is a mechanism which means to tie the company's business success directly to their customers' successes

Customer experience

The customer is the business heart in management. The convergence of all company resources on the customer experience is defined as customer centricity so you need to improve the customer experience to become a customer centered Business

Customer centric doesn't mean to be a doormat for the customer

A common misconception that we have observed is that personnel of a firm initially believe that becoming customer centric means that you must perform as a "doormat" for the customer.

Being customer centric requires that you seek to understand the customers' needs, set expectations about what can/cannot be done, provide alternatives if a customer's exact request cannot be accommodated and then meet/exceed those expectations. It should be obvious that it's not about simply doing everything the Customer wants, irrespective of the impact on the business. It means products, services and resources should be utilized in line with the organizations overall strategy as well as meeting the needs of Customers.

In summary, becoming customer centric does not mean that you become a doormat for the customer. The reality is that if your firm doesn't remain profitable in its relationship with the customer, then you will cease to exist. Because when a relationship no longer provides mutual benefit, then it is no longer healthy and should be terminated. That wouldn't mean being a customer centric requires you act as a doormat, would it?

Experts outlined following advices to improve the customer centricity

Set clear expectations up-front about what your product/service can do, what it can't do, and when it will be necessary to discuss upgrades/add-ons for supportability and the customer's anticipated growth.

• Don't let the daily noise cloud judgment or take focus away from the root-cause problem.

• The customer should and does get what they pay for - and they know it!

• Definition of insanity - continuing to do the same thing, expecting a different result.

Know your customers' businesses as well as you know your own

A customer centered Business has developed company-wide procedures, policies, and activities to ensure they are constantly researching and learning about each customer's performance needs and matching them to the business' value propositions and execution abilities to meet them, resulting in market success for both the business and its customers

(Value propositions are the promises a human resource management of company makes to its customers about the performance of its benefits. Execution is the way the company keeps the promises)

Being Customer Centric is about an ability for everyone in the company to continuously learn about Customers and the market. It is also the responsibility of everyone in the company to respond appropriately to what we learn.

It should be noted also that "being a listening organization" isn't enough. Organizations need to be a "questioning organization" as well and then listen carefully to the responses. And the questions can't be focused on their business example "How do you like our products?" but on their customer's business such as "Who's your competition?"

Altogether you have to change your belief that you know what customers need. You have to reverse your belief that customers will (even be able to) tell you what they want.

Measuring customer centricity

At first you may think that customer satisfaction might be the metric but it is not. Asking customers how they feel about your product or the experience might be insightful but it doesn't get to the heart of measuring customer centricity this means that customer satisfaction metrics talk more about customer behaviors rather than the degree to which an organization is customer centric

Same thing goes for customer loyalty, which means customer-centricity is a characteristic of the company whereas customer loyalty is a characteristic of the customer. To see how to measure customer centricity degree read through the following 4 metrics:

1. Customers drive your processes, policies, products and people to all be focused on insuring that any outcome is being created in support of meeting a customer's needs, demands or expectations. Possible metrics:

a) How many times has customer input resulted in new policies?

b) How often do you gather customer input on how well a key process is working?

c) How often do you gather customer input to design the next generation of product?

d) Do you survey the customers on how well the website is serving their needs?

2. The company places itself in the customer's circumstances in order to design its products, services and processes. Possible metrics:

a) How often does company leadership use the existing processes to see how they are working for a customer?

b) How often does company leadership observe the employees using processes in serving and selling to customers?

3. The company has a proactive approach to engaging, listening and responding to customers.

Possible metric:

a) How often does the company reach out and contact longtime customers, customers with multiple company products or customers who have consistently demonstrated loyalty by referring others? (Does the company even know which customers would fit into these various categories of customers?)

4. The customer-centric company attracts the customer to their products and services by offering an experience that the customer desires. Possible metric:
a) Does the company ask the new customer, using a sincere approach, why they chose to do business with the company?

Customer centricity as a business strategy

The top level goal or destination for the company needs to be financial, but the strategy also has to cover both what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it. Therefore, if you decide to have a Customer centric strategy this single decision will drive the structure and content of your entire strategy and plan. It's not just another statement or section within your business strategy document.

If you want to learn more about management in Persian مدیریت visit website.