For Entrepreneurs: Build your customer-centric strategy
If customer is the king, build his kingdom!

Market reports stated that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than other companies. Ironically, many businesses choose to focus on world-class products, not real customers need. This wrong focus leads to less profit and low customer satisfaction than ever. For startups, customer centricity becomes a must for competing and penetrating the market. But what does it mean to be a customer-centric business?
What is customer centricity?
Customer centricity is the approach of providing a positive customer experience in a way that makes profits for the company. It’s all about finding the magical common area between your business goals and your customer needs “The shared value”.

According to Larry Weber in his book “The Digital marketer”, there are six factors that affect the customer experience and the way they perceive our business.

The product experience
without solving a real customer problem, your product will not make it to even one customer. So, understanding customers and their problems enables you to make the right solution. It is not about how many features your product has but about how many features your customers need. You need a product that can hook the customer to repeat their business with you. Also, consider differentiating your product from the others. what will be your edge; is it the price, the quality or the service?
The marketing experience
Customer experience marketing is different from the traditional marketing strategies. The way you reach your customer needs to be more relevant and personalized. Each customer needs to feel unique and your message is tailored to him/her. When the customers feel important and appreciated, they will be open to trying your product.

in 2014, Coca-Cola made “share a Coke” campaign. They printed many names on its coke cans and people went crazy searching for their names in coke fridges. Furthermore, they made a website where you can order a coke with any name you like on it. So, if you are celebrating at your school, wouldn’t it be cool to get coke a bottle with the school name on it?
The search experience

The search experience is all about how the customers find you when they have the problem you solve. Logically, if you have a stationary store, the best place to put a billboard ad is in front of the school. But when it comes to the online search the process becomes more complicated. You want to be the first option appears to the customers when they search online. So, you need to decide:
- how your website looks like
- where to put your ads
- what social media platforms you should exist on.
- where customers can find reviews of your product.
Understanding the customer search behavior will optimize the targeting and cut the cost.
Shopping Experience
You already grabbed your customers attention and they decided to get your product. Now, you need to design their shopping experience. For example, if you have a selling website, you need to consider
- how easy is it to find the products on the website?
- how relevant are the suggested products to what the customer needs?
- Is it easy to register and process the payments?
- Are all the offered products in stock?
- How will be the shipping and delivery experience?
If you have in-store products, you need to consider
- how do you display your products?
- how cooperative are your employees?
- how fast and easy is the check out process?
- how clean are your place and your products?
The shopping is the time when customers pay money to you. So, they need to feel they are dealing with professionals who deserve their money.
Check out Amazon go; the new in-store shopping experience from Amazon. Customers just go grab whatever they need from the store and leave. The check-out will be automatically done through their phone.
Service &Customer care experience
The service and the customer care are the intangible part of your product. Customers should easily find answers to their questions and concerns about your product. FAQs, explanatory videos, information desks or phone calls can ease the customer buying decision.
Furthermore, you need to have a professional after-sales services. These services include maintenance, getting customers feedback and handling their complaints.
“U.S. businesses lose $62 billion each year because of bad customer experiences” NewVoiceMedia
Community experience
Create a space for your customers where they can interact with you and your product. Enable them to share their product experience, give their feedback, ask questions or suggest a feature. This community can be as simple as a Facebook page or a Twitter hashtag. Community forums are not only helpful for customers but they are extremely important for companies. These forums show how people talk about the product and what they suggest to make it better. Dell made a very profitable use of their community through their “Ideastorm” website. Through the website, people submitted thousands of ideas for features and products.
The most important point here is to keep a high level of interaction with your customers. For example, don’t ignore their questions, be responsive to their feedback. Do what you can to make them feel appreciated and listened to.
Practical step
Now, let’s make things real and start taking a step forward whether your business is up and running or still an idea. Gather your team and reevaluate your strategy and see how much customer-centric are you. Start discussing each factor and what will be your approach towards this factor. Create long lists of questions and work on answering them. Consider market experts opinion and bring the customer voice through surveys or interviews. And always remember, the more customer-centric you are, the more profitable you are.
