It’s not enough to provide a good product or service at a fair price. Companies need to understand the customer experience on every level, from delivery of value to emotional satisfaction because, by the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
Your customers don’t come to you for your satisfaction. They come to you to solve their problems. That means your business must be structured around solving that problem. That’s easier said than done and evolving into a customer-centric organization is no small feat.
Satisfaction ≠ Solved Problems
Customer Connectedness
We know the only way to improve customer relationships is to ensure your customers aren’t just satisfied, but that you’re truly solving their problems, but how do you know your organization understands their problems? It starts with understanding the customer journey.
The only way to ensure you understand the consumer’s journey and their pain points along that journey is by hearing directly from your customers. Most companies project their own gut-feelings or rely on anecdotes to understand how customers feel about their brand or product, but if you don’t have a system in place to receive accurate and unbiased feedback from your customers, you’re throwing away money. Consumer opinion research can give you clear insights into exactly what the customer journey looks like and can help you mitigate potential pain points before they impact your bottom-line.
Expertly researched and unbiased consumer opinions and insights must be embedded in every aspect of your operation. Only then can you begin to develop…
Customer-Centric Values
For many firms, this will require an organizational shift from the traditional “silo” priorities to prioritizing customers at every level of the organization. Aligning your organizational values and mission with your customers’ expectations is the first step in delivering an excellent customer experience, but remember, brand values don’t mean anything without…
Customer-Focused Leadership
Once you’ve committed to a clear customer-focused purpose, the leaders in the organization are responsible for communicating that purpose. Engagement and culture develop top-down, so it’s important to ensure that leadership understands how each organizational function impacts the customer experience and is constantly communicating that with their team.
Employee Engagement
Customer Satisfaction is an organizational function, like marketing or accounting, but everyone in your organization is responsible for the customer experience.