Why Your Business isn’t Customer Centric

Raise your hand if you’ve heard that your business needs to be customer centric. Now raise your hand if your business is customer centric. If you didn’t raise your hand at all – and not only because you are in a public space and are wary of strangers seeing you perform erratic movements – then you better quickly learn why your B2B business needs to be customer centric. Never even heard of customer centricity? Get up to date now on the most important business trend of our era and why it’s so imperative. 

If you raised your hand both times, how certain are you that your business is actually customer centric? Does the company culture profess a customer-first mentality but then fail to legitimately follow through on it? That’s not meant to be a dig, but is actually a very real problem when it comes to attaining a truly customer-centric ethos. 

Many businesses frequently fail to attain a legitimately customer-centric business practice, whether or not they list customer centricity as a core component of the company’s values. Most businesses fail to be centered on their customers, and with all likelihood, your B2B business is also coming up short in the customer centricity race. 

86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience

Why your business isn’t customer centric 

B2B organizations are no strangers to robust customer support and customer success operations, however too often customer relationships are transactional – a customer has a problem and you help, but the business’s concern is just closing out tickets and hitting ideal response and resolution times. That may have cut it in the proverbial digital stone ages, but now customer support is a blossoming discipline and customers expect better and more personalized support and service. 

But why should your business care about being truly customer centric? Firstly, if you claim customer-centricity as a selling point for your company but then fail to actually follow through on that promise, customers will find out. If the current digital age has taught us nothing else, it’s that people will find these things out. You can’t hide behind language, you have to walk the talk. 

Secondly, the benefits of a customer centric business operate as a two-way street. Yes, a customer centric approach is all about generating the best customer experience possible and it is not transactional. However, customer-centric businesses also benefit greatly from putting their customers first. HubSpot reports that existing customers are some  60 to 70% more likely to purchase products than new business leads, who have a significantly lower rate of 5 to 20%. Not only that, but 86% of customers are willing to pay more only on the premise of a better customer experience, according to Superoffice.

How to be – and not to be – customer centric

We’ve established that being customer centric goes far beyond simply declaring it – a business needs to follow a set of tenets for truly creating a customer centric culture. 

Types of goals for becoming customer centric

• Don’t aim only for better metrics

There’s no denying that CSAT and NPS scores are helpful metrics when determining customer health, but they should never be taken as the sole prophet of customer truths. Customer health needs to be seen from a 360-degree, holistic viewpoint.

• Do strive for better customer understanding

With a 360-degree view of customers, your business not only has a feeler on a customer's satisfaction with your products and services, but also their general well-being and their success in their own initiatives.

How to operate a customer centric business

• Don’t neglect personalized customer service

A business can’t operate on a one-size-fits-all policy when it comes to customer support and then claim they are customer centric. Customer centricity is all about personalized customer support that fits the customer and their needs.

• Do shift your the problem-solving perspective

The tired customer support team’s modus operandi is concentrating on simply alleviating customer issues and solving tickets – as fast as possible. Well somewhat of a tried and true approach, it prevents any real business growth and stops you from getting a full picture of the customer. By shifting your perspective your business can move to a 360-degree, holistic understanding of all of your customers. 

Skills needed for being customer centric

• Do cultivate active listening skills

It sounds too easy and too simple to be true – but it is. Your business must actually hear and understand a customer’s pains and concerns – and not just wait for your rebuttal or turn to speak.

Looking to develop a truly customer-centric business model? Dive into our customer-centricity eBook below!