Customer-obsessed companies can grow their revenues faster and build a more loyal customer base. While this sounds like a great strategy, companies are left wondering how they can actually achieve a customer-centric culture.
Having executive leadership and cross functional alignment plays a significant role in influencing customer engagement. When customer focused values and principles are embedded into the day-to-day lives of your people and processes, leaders have an additional advantage to drive profitability, employee retention and revenue growth.
By doing so you are enabling the business to operate differently, such that providing great customer experience is a natural by-product of the way they work.
With companies today focusing on delivering superior customer experience as a key differentiator, it is important for businesses in Asia to understand how culture and leadership can influence customer engagement. Here are four factors companies should take note of:
According to a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, companies are not placing enough emphasis on customer service. However, 76 percent consumers indicate that companies should prioritise on delivering superior services to their consumers.
In order to become a Customer Experience (CX) leader, the customer must be a top priority for the organisation. Senior leadership teams must show accountability for all CX metrics. This includes consistent communication both internally and externally on the success and shortcomings of customer programs and metrics.
Where you will see the most success is when various departments share the same CX vision, making it a shared responsibility throughout the organisation. While they might address different aspects, they are all aligned on common processes and data sharing practices.
It is recommended that an organisation should have a central team to manage the overall CX program. They should be responsible for the overall integrity of the program, comprehensive goal setting and ongoing tracking. Most importantly, they need to be supported by senior leadership.
See: 5 Affordable Ways to Nurture Loyal Customer Relationship
Whilst it’s essential to measure the success of your CX program, it is more important to be consistent about how an organisation measures success. Doing so, allows an organisation to compare historical data, measure improvements over time and identify trends for further improvement.
When creating your organisation’s customer values, be very specific and ensure that they clearly convey priorities and how these priorities translate to actions for each member of your organisation.
Once you have agreed upon CX values, communicating it to your customers is an excellent way to show accountability. Remember, talking about your values is one thing, but the next step is to deliver on your promises.
Customer-obsession is an ongoing process. Organisations keen on becoming truly customer-obsessed, must listen to feedback from customers and act on it proactively. Organisations using a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use platform can gather real-time snapshots of their customer experiences and determine where they can make operational and strategic improvements.
By gathering this kind of feedback and analysing it for insights, businesses can be able to continuously improve upon their customer experiences. This will in turn help companies improve revenues, and gain competitive advantage in the market.
Author credit:
Vicky Katsabaris, Customer Experience (CX) Subject Matter Expert, Asia Pacific and Japan, Qualtrics
Feature image credit: Freepik
Also read: Agile Thinking for Business: How Can a New Mindset Enhance Engagement and Effectiveness?
