All the Tools You Need to Transform Your Business for Commercial Success.... Are in this Book
I wrote the Power of Customer Experience to demonstrate once and for all that consumer-facing businesses who are commercially successful over a long and sustained period of time, do so due to them being truly customer-centric in all that they do. I wanted to create a framework that any business, no matter how big or how small, can leverage to transform to become customer centric.
Here we are in 2021 and most consumer-facing businesses still look at ‘the cost to serve customers’ rather than the benefit. You can also see this feed through into the disproportionate sums that are spent on acquiring customers compared to retaining them. There is almost no focus on customer lifetime value. No focus on driving loyalty.
I’ve even heard industry luminaries say that ‘loyalty is dead.’ My contention is that loyalty never really existed and if it did, it was largely down to a lack of consumer choice pre-internet.
Yes, there is noise about customer promiscuity and how much loyalty consumers display. But there is a clear cause and effect on this. The internet drove proliferation of choice and the balance of power shifted from retailer to consumer. And given the lack of effort to build relationships with customers they have not been given many reasons to be loyal to one brand over another.
Despite this, and as I have proven in my new book, ‘The Power of Customer Experience’, there is a direct correlation between brands who are customer centric and their commercial performance over a sustained period of time.
Whether you’re cutting keys and re-heeling shoes as is the case with Timpson or selling outdoor clothing and accessories, which Patagonia does with aplomb, these brands and those who are commercially successful year after year after year, are truly customer centric. That is their most important differentiator.
They put their own people first. They create a culture of opportunity, collaboration, empowerment, learning and development and with a genuine purpose to do good at its heart. Their people are trusted to make decisions for customers, which delivers better experiences for them and a stronger commercial outcome.
They understand that being socially responsible, caring for the environment and all of its stakeholders is hugely important to its customers and has to be lived and breathed and not just a tick box exercise.
Customer-centric businesses have an inept ability to turn customers into fans. To deepen both the emotional and rational attachment to the brand. The former often driven by purpose, values and culture, the latter by great product, customer service and experience.
They measure the right things. They understand that traditional operational metrics such as footfall, traffic, conversion rates and average order values are important to know, but don’t deliver insight that can help you to improve your performance. These are merely outputs. The inputs are far more important. These include customer satisfaction (CSAT), net promoter scores (NPS), product availability, first time resolution of customer service issues and so on. What we really need to understand is why are our operational KPIs up or down? Only the right inputs can help to answer that and for you to take corrective actions.
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