How to Create a CustomerCentric Experience (part 1)

It’s no longer enough to have a great product at a great price. Eight out of 10 customers say that the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. And smart businesses are taking note; Google searches for the phrase “custom

As the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution — such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things — are enabling businesses to offer better customer experiences, customer expectations have increased across the board. Now, businesses must provide exceptional customer experience if they want to stay competitive. Providing amazing service before and after a transaction means offering greater personalisation and more highly valued, connected experiences across channels.

In short, they need to become customercentric. Being customer-centric means putting the customer at the heart of everything you do as a business, from marketing to sales to customer service touchpoints across every channel.

While the definition will vary between industries and individual companies, customer-centric businesses all have one thing in common — they obsess over the customer experience.

Why Is It Important to Be Customer-Centric?

Customer expectations are evolving at a rapid pace. Research from Salesforce’s “State of the Connected Customer” report shows that today’s consumers and business buyers are more informed and less loyal than their predecessors. They’re looking for differentiated experiences that engender trust, and they will shop around to find them.

Simply providing service with a smile isn’t enough. A significant majority (84%) of customers say that being treated like a person, rather than a number, is very important to winning their business. And with 76% of consumers and business buyers saying that it’s easier than ever to take their business elsewhere, the pressure is on for organisations to get customer experience right.

The good news? The same study found that 74% of businessto-business customers and 63% of consumers will pay more for a great experience. This means that businesses have an opportunity to increase revenue by delighting their customers in a way that nobody else can.

Research shows that customer experience impacts the bottom line, for better or worse.

What Does It Mean to Be Customer-Centric?

Putting the customer first is not a new idea. However, the same technologies that are changing customer behaviour — including mobile devices, social media, the cloud, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence (AI) — are enabling businesses to personalise interactions with customers in a whole new way.

“Personal doesn’t just mean uplevelling a generic experience with a person’s name,” points out Mathew Sweezey, Salesforce’s principal of marketing insights. “Instead, it’s about dynamically creating a personal experience at each and every moment — from the first search that helps customers ideate their needs to

their final

pur - chase, and every moment of the journey in between.”

For a customer that has established a relationship with a brand, this might mean receiving personalised recommendations based on their purchasing history as they scroll through a company’s website on the way home from work, then receiving a follow-up email the next day offering a discount.

Peter Schwartz, Salesforce senior vice president of Strategic Planning likens the process to a tailor modifying a garment’s design to fit each customer individually. In the pre-industrial world, he points out, a tailor came to know each customer — their build, the way they wanted to look, and the fabric they preferred. Mass production and the growth of mainstream retailing changed that.

“Today, companies are once again shaping their selling experience to fit each customer individually,” Schwartz explains. “That means constantly modifying the standard product or service, like the tailors of a bygone era, but now companies add that type of craftsmanship at scale.”

A hotel group, for example, will leverage information guests give them to personalise their hotel stay at one of their properties and anticipate their needs in advance, whether it’s a preference for a particular type of pillow or information about local yoga classes. An online retailer might show customers similar products that other browsers have viewed, as well as provide direct comparisons to those products. A fashion rental company will correlate data gleaned from subscribers’ use of the service with information about their inventory to help users pick their next rental outfit faster and with a greater likelihood that it will be a perfect fit.

The next article in this series will look at what being customer-centric means for businesses.