Can everyone in your business hear your customers?
Who talks to your clients every day?
Is it you?
Is it your salespeople?
Is it the teams that serve your customers?
Who listens to your clients every day?
What customer-centric means
Being customer-centric is not just about appreciation gifts, cards on birthdays, and a friendly demeanor.
Being customer-centric means innovating for customers, not against the competition. It means solving problems that your customers have, not bringing them solutions they don’t need. And it means understanding your customer context and language.
This is not just important in marketing and sales. This makes a difference throughout the business as a whole.
Product development
Who is working on your product or service development?
Are your craftspeople behind the public scenes? Do they connect with clients through a salesperson or account manager?
For your product to remain relevant, it has to be continuously responding to your customers’ needs and preferences. To do that, your staff have to hear and understand what those preferences are.
To keep your product or service relevant, the customer’s voice has to flow right through your company.
Communications and Service
Everybody who is speaking to (marketing, communication) or directly serving (salespeople or craftspeople) your customers is hearing from them all the time.
It is not to “keep in touch”, it is not enough to give updates and news.
Listening is a different task and has to be built into how you interact with your clients.
How are these front line workers collecting feedback and sharing new ideas?
Ensure that listening is a deliberate part of customer interactions.
What about the back office
All the people who serve the business, rather than the customer: it could be finance, admin, human resources, internal operations or logistics, and more.
Why do they have to hear your customers?
Because they have to understand the business they work in. They have to understand the goals and direction the business is taking. And they too will have insight to share. The back office remains an essential part of efficiency and growth in business. Allowing those people to understand the market you serve, means allowing them to be better at their jobs and contribute to your needs as a business owner.
Have you shared your goals with everyone in your business?
Make sure everybody is working towards a common goal. Work with me to create a goals worksheet and get quarterly reporting.