Customer-Centricity is more than just an approach, it’s a characteristic, it’s a way of doing business. If applied correctly, it's entrenched in every component of your business right from the executives sitting around the boardroom table, to the security guard heroically watching over your valued customer’s vehicles in the car park.
The numbers speak for themselves;
- 92, the % of customers that say they would stop purchasing from a company after three or fewer poor customer experiences.
- 1, the number of bad experiences it would take for 26% percent of those to stop purchases completely.
That’s according to Gladly’s 2018 Customer Service Expectations Survey. The stats and facts are a compelling argument that if you don’t fine-tune your Customer-Centricity efforts, you could be facing a gloomy future.
In today’s rapidly changing business environment, one needs to become Customer-Centric not only to thrive, but for those who want to survive. Today’s customer is more mobile, content-seeking, impatient and independent than at any other time in history which means, in today’s business environment, companies have to be agile and in tune with what their customers want.
Customers expect more than ever before. Your customers no longer compare you just to your direct competition. You are being compared to the best experience they have ever received – from any business or any person. It could be a store, a service provider or even an online seller – any business. Customers now know what a great customer experience looks like, and they expect it from you.
As an example, for many years some believed that millennial customers weren’t really customers worth pursuing, as they had not yet joined the workforce and were thought to have very little decision making power regarding the purchases their households would make. This is no longer the case. According to CNBC, Millennials are estimated to spend more than $200 billion annually starting already in 2017.
It is clear that modern customers are an enormous commercial force to be reckoned with, commanding both trendsetting power and tremendous spending power as well. A trend that we have noticed is that this modern customer has higher expectations from businesses, and tend to “jump ship” if those expectations are not met. Ultimately, consumers want brands that behave humanly and have a higher purpose.
For instance, millennials care about the environment and want their "brands" to do so too. These customers want the companies they support to have a higher sense of purpose than just making money. Authenticity is key.
Zhecho (2014) shares facts on the Return on Investment (ROI) in companies that deliver exceptional performance on customer expectations. These include the following:
- Customers who had the best past experiences spend 140% more compared to those who had the poorest past experience.
- Customer satisfaction results in a higher share price.
- Keeping customers results in a high increase in customer value – especially in an environment where 68% of customers routinely leave because of bad service.
- Your existing customers are much easier to up-sell.
To demonstrate the enhanced positive impact of customer-centricity, the founder of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) performs an experiment to compare returns of the companies with the highest satisfaction scores with the S&P 500.
Customer-Centric companies clearly deliver higher stock returns. If you are not yet convinced that this is the right thing in business, have a look at this example "Customer-Centricity Case Study: Hit and Miss".