Data-driven customer-centric
The key to business success always has something to do with becoming truly customer-centric. Big examples like Amazon, Glossier & Warby Parker tend to be the ultimate examples of truly customer-centric companies. But where do you start? What does the customer really want? Short and simple; Data & culture
Now if that answer doesn’t satisfy you then keep on reading! This is the first part of a series where I explain the general overview of where to start with becoming more customer-centric based on data. In the following posts, I would love to go more in-depth on how to really execute these steps.
1. Map your funnel
To really understand where you can make the biggest impact on your customer, you need to know what their journey is. How does your customer reach their goals and what role does your company play in their journey? To answer those questions it’s a good start to map their funnel
Now not every journey looks the same. But it’s good to have a general understanding and overview. A good way to start is to go through the following data sets :
- Google Analytics
- Basic customer interviews
I see a lot of big and small companies really missing out on just asking the customer for what they want. Big companies are really easy to start hiring these big firms to ask these questions (and don’t get me wrong, doing good customer interviews is a profession on it’s own) but just start with asking questions each quarter to get a general idea.
2. Setup missing data points
A lot of data comes from customers you already acquired like google analytics data. But in order to not only find friction among current customers, but you will also need to go after barriers among potential customers.
This usually brings you back to the basics of customer interviews, but the key is to do this periodically with tools like google surveys. Now, these tools will not give you in-depth knowledge on what these barriers are, but it gives you a baseline on where to improve. For each step in your funnel, there are ways to gather as much data as possible :
- Customer surveys, go talk to potential customers
- Test campaign, set up a small test campaign to a landing page and see what happens
- Loyalty mail, send out a survey to your current customers and ask what you can improve.
Asking the right questions, the right way is the key to success here. I really liked the article from Patrick on conducting user interviews.
3. Use this data to build your priority
At the end of the day, you will be presented by a huge list of hurdles your customers go through to reach their goals. Now it’s time to tell which hurdles are the most important to your customer. This is the tricky part because you have limited time and resources to really make a difference. What is more important to your customer, build a better TV ad or improve the delivery options?
I wish I could give you a formula like x amount of time spent by your customer devided by value, but to be honest I don’t know the solution to this for your company. Here comes in your entrepreneurial ability to find what makes the biggest impact.
For me, I look at the number of people in each step of the funnel and the amount that drop out at that step. I work my way back from my “magic moment” (a better word for conversion) to the top of the funnel and degrade the value by 25% every step of the funnel.
When it comes to loyalty and churn I consider this as a separate priority because I believe this part of the funnel deserves more attention from the start.
This is a general overview of how to really lay the foundation of becoming more customer-centric. From here out it’s how to under promise and over deliver.
In my next post, I will be going into depth in each step of the funnel. I am really looking forward to hearing your thoughts and know what you think of this approach.
