Know your customer

You do not control the success of your business.

Your customer does.

If you don’t know who your customer, client, end user is, then you don’t know your business. All the fantastical ideas in the world won’t save you if you can’t pin point who they are and what they need.

Failing to understand your customer is planning to fail

· You’ll market to the wrong audience, in the wrong channels making it impossible to meet customer expectations.

· You’ll sell to customers whose needs will be impossible to fulfil post sales.

· Your product and service features will fall flat, piss people off and result in churn.

· Your on-boarding and relationship management will lack the ability to enable your users with the tools they need to be successful with your product.

You get the point.

Every person in your organisation should know who your customer is. It’s the foundation for success in order for you to deliver top-quality products and services.

So what does it mean to ‘know your customer’?

Let’s start with what it is not. Your customer is not “oh pretty much everyone”. Start by personifying them. Define them….. Who are they? What do they do? What do they believe in? What are their wants and needs? It is impossible to cater to everyone, if you understand your customer, you’ll understand what features and processes will make them successful. If they’re successful, so are you.

Knowing your customer isn’t about embodying the “the customer is always right” mantra either. The customer is always right about their expected outcome. This is what they expect to achieve through the use of your product. You get to be right about how that expected outcome is delivered.

Understand what your customers really want

If Henry Ford had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have told him “a faster horse……..” What they really desired was a more efficient means of travel — and so the mass-produced motorcar was born. In order for your business to succeed, you need to first identify your customer’s desired outcome. To truly know your customer is to innovate the delivery of that desired outcome and it’s a journey that you’ll always need to work on. Innovation is ever changing because customer wants and needs are too. Just compare the Model T to a Tesla.

How we made it work for us

In the broadest sense, Centrality understands that the success of those who interact with our company is ultimately to use blockchain technology to create tomorrow, together. Centrality works to deliver this whilst ensuring that for each project that lands on our desk we understand the customer who will interact with the product and experience we help to create. We strive to ensure that the right customer is defined for each project and for each discipline within the organisation. To innovate the delivery of a desired outcome, our teams work as cross functionally as possible from the word go. Projects begin with customer focussed workshops, including team members from executive, development, experience and design teams. This way we are all clear from the beginning, customer first. Because we understand that our success relies on delivering success to our customers.