How to build a customer-centric culture with CRM in 5 steps

A customer-centric culture is the primary source of customer loyalty, irrespective of how honed your services and products are. To prioritize and deliver exemplary fluid customer experiences, every company must pay a lot more attention and understand what their customers truly want. Provide a positive customer experience and you’ll notice a rapid competitive advantage, followed by an increase in profit.

The importance of a customer-centric culture cannot be overstated. In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, customers have more choices than ever before, and they are not afraid to take their business elsewhere if they are not satisfied.

By putting the customer at the center of everything they do, companies can create a sustainable competitive advantage that will help them thrive in today’s ever-changing business landscape.

What is a customer-centric culture?

It is with worrying high-speed how consumers’ needs are changing and raise the pressure point on companies, which are trying to assert dominance in a competitive market. To know, to understand and be responsive to consumers’ requirements is not a simple duty, in fact, it turns into a power game. Ideally, it would be necessary that you are in control over the way they behave and act and keep a bilateral direction with them.

The customer-centric culture pertains to modalities, attempts and strategies that companies implement in order to maintain the sustenance and enthusiasm of consumers, along with adding value to the level of loyalty the consumers have in relation to the companies and brands they follow online.

Why is it a customer-centric culture so important?

Generally, companies are in a constant competitivity, the level of the competitive advantage can go up or down according to the measures, tactics or strategies you make use of. These will influence how much time consumers spend thinking about your company, whether to pick you as their first choice or stay loyal to your brand.

Brands which have managed to earn the trust of consumers have sensed certain transformations within the company. A study conducted by Deloitte and Touche has observed how customer-driven brands had an increase in profitability of 60% contrary to those who didn’t invest in a customer-centric strategy.

Brand consumers grow in number and create brand communities, which are 5 times more inclined to purchase a product of the brand, 7 times more willing to purchase a newly-launched product or 4 times more determined to recommend the product in time.

Another study conducted by SurveyMonkey has demonstrated that employees that work in a customer-centric company feel more appreciated for their effort. Their studies have showed how employees are 2 times more eager to work for the same company in the next 2 years if their values and needs are respected.

Another significant aspect repeatedly omitted by some companies is that they have a greater focus on their consumers, which is not entirely a negative approach, but companies should always take account of both B2B and B2C

In this way, if you choose the right audience efficiently, you will improve both the relationships with consumers as well as with those B2B-oriented.

How do brands handle customer-centricity?

If I mentioned above how businesses can benefit from the strategies aimed at consumers, this is the right time we analyzed if they rightfully handle this assignment on a large scale. We will notice, through statistics, how much they progressed from this point of view and why, in case they didn’t, companies can’t seize positive results.

First of all, we must understand that the majority of consumers are more willing to self-educate themselves. They become curious, more entitled to seek information from a quick and efficient source, instead of waiting for answers from companies.

There’s a disconnection between what companies think they do, in relation to the clients’ needs, and the way consumers react. Another study shows that 87% of companies believe they succeed in creating a favorable experience for their consumers, although only 11% of consumers agree with the proper customer experiences companies offer.

The majority of findings have been acquired from reports carried out in the USA and these divulge how the level of customer experience differ depending on the industry. Unlike 2019, in which the overall average was still “OK”, the exceptions are found in the healthcare industry, airlines, utilities and Federal government. In 2020, the graphic suffered a few modifications, however in the same sectors little has been done.
Surprisingly, for the bank sector, the level of customer experience has dropped.

What could the main reason for these oscillations be?

For the most part, if you want to gain satisfying results, companies relate to their database. The loyalty strategy, of a customer-centric experience, is based on data-analyzing as well as understanding feedback. The issues companies have could stem from the lack of harnessing the database at its maximum potential.
Every company must understand how insight about their own consumers and prospects can determine strategic models. From the moment you get access to the database it turns into a piece of cake to create a comprehensive profile of consumers. The profile will contain the consumer lifetime value, behavior, purchase preferences, communication channels, services or tools they depend on and so on.

How do you get to know your consumers better?

Many of the companies use diverse data storage systems, which allow companies to have a deep understanding of what a “prospect” consists of. A reliable data storage system would be CRM (Client Relationship Management) and as a result to the implementation of this system, companies improved their relationship with consumers with a 74%. CRM owns a feature called “Customer Insights” and it offers important data about consumers and consumers market, the product performance and consumer purchasing behavior.

All the data collected about consumers helps companies identify, foreseen and approach those factors which can influence both the sales and the profit.

In every industry we have a team or a single individual responsible for projects, campaigns or day-to-day tasks. Therefore, implementing customer-centric strategies requires a team leader who has knowledge, leads the CX initiatives and know what to prioritize for further development. As it seems only 16% of companies have an assigned employee for these business strategies.
If there’s no team accountable for CX projects, the outcome has low success rates.

In the next section, we will examine how we can take advantage of CRM to improve the CX strategy and the customer-centric culture.

How to improve your customer-centric culture with CRM?

The competitive market coerces companies to build a customer-centric culture, which acts as a 2-edge sword. One that can save your company and the other one that is difficult without an organized database system. CRM plays a fundamental role in the creation of a customer-centric culture, because it helps companies manage their interactions and relationships with their prospects.

With every step presented we will notice how a well-defined strategy with CRM focuses on specific things, that has one principle at the core: People.

Define a customer-centric vision

The planning of a customer-centric strategy commences by setting explicit, well-defined and clear visions. It’s important that we remember what we’re aiming for as it is beneficial for consumer experiences. They become our point of interest in terms of strategical initiatives.
This vision should be forwarded to the departments responsible with the way the strategies will be applied. For a flawless vision, CRM is disposing of insight and important data about consumers, these can determine and inform the development team about the drafting of the strategies.

Align technologies and CRM processes to discover what your consumers want

The CRM system is an efficient tool when you manage your relationship with consumers due to task-automatization, process-streamlining or the platform-centralization, which allows the company to add value to the CRM system and get a positive outcome. Both the data, collected from consumers, and the insight can become a great advantage after going through a thorough analysis.
As long as the preferences, behaviors and other vulnerable points are taken into consideration, it will become simpler to personalize interactions with consumers and deliver personalized experiences.
The CRM system contributes to the communication streamlining between the company’s departments, by improving collaboration around the company’s members. If the members have a consistent and unified approach, the engagement rate with consumers will also increase.

Stimulate your teams

The company’s employees play an important role in the organization of a customer-centric culture and this development is visible if the company offers training sessions, that are crucial in understanding how the CRM system works. The training sessions will point to other important aspects such as self-development that relates to interactions with consumers, empathy, problem-solving skills and conflict-settlement.

Consumers are unpredictable, more of a reason that employees should improve their human nature in relation to other people, so that, applied in the context of a CRM system, they will have knowledge about service-delivering in a more appropriate manner.

Promote a healthy, customer-centered mindset

The CRM system, as said before, is an excellent tool to grow, preserve and manage consumers, but the maximum potential of the system can’t be reached if an appropriate mindset isn’t promoted across the company. This type of approach is relentlessly a good method in getting one step closer to your potential prospects, that one can access it through a profound understanding. Employees should learn how to think from a consumer perspective and prioritize their satisfaction.

Measurement of consumer experiences

Consumer experiences and the level of satisfaction is quantifiable, thus it is advisable that, during the time the company launches a customer-centric strategy, one must have a system of result-analysis. CRM, apart from data and insight, has features that help companies create distinct metrics and statistics about how their campaign, project, initiatives came off. You’ll have access to consumer satisfaction score, retention rate or consumer lifetime value.

Every point encompasses important features of CRM, which depend on a strategic approach so we could incorporate our vision, the technological and processes alignment in order to determine consumers’ needs. All of these will lead to the training and support of employees, as well as an empowerment of a mindset customer-centered.

With every implementation, any company will be able to create a culture which prioritizes the satisfaction and loyalty of consumers on long-term.

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