Some brands have a way of creating powerful relationships with their customers. The compelling experiences they offer lead to deep relationships. Customers keep coming back.
That doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of the customer-obsessed corporate culture.
Customer obsession is more than having great products and services. Yes, most businesses that are customer-obsessed have these things. But it’s more: Enthusiastically looking for ways to add value to the customer experience, prioritizing customer needs, and using customer feedback to drive continuous improvement.
How do you get there? By embracing the 6 “Customer-Obsessed Qualities.”
6 Customer-Obsessed Qualities to Transform Your Business
1. Put Customer Retention Over Acquisition
You already know acquiring new customers is more expensive and time-consuming than keeping your existing ones. But did you know it can be up to 25 times cheaper? That comes from being methodical in providing customer care and customer success resources.
2. Emphasize Quality, Not Quantity
Customer obsession means shifting away from a focus on the size of your customer base to the depth of relationships. By personalizing the value you offer, you can expand the lifetime value of each customer. That supercharges repeat sales and referral business.
3. Align the Enterprise with Customer Success
For customers to be happy, every part of the enterprise needs to pull in the same direction. Customer success means recognizing the goals of your customers, creating training assets to help reach their objectives, and following up – across departments and timeframes.
4. Make Customer Service Proactive, Not Reactive
Old-fashioned customer service waits until the customer makes a problem known. For all the people who take time out to contact you, however, many more have the same issue. Combining automation and self-service resources can equip you to resolve issues faster.
5. Collect and Implement Customer Feedback Regularly
Only customers can tell you what they really think, want, or don’t want. Too often, teams spend time trying to figure people out through market analysis instead of doing the simple thing: Asking them. Net Promoter Score and other surveys help you zero in on areas for improvement.
6. Analyze Data and Leverage Trends
Collecting feedback is only the start. To see results, you have to change what you do and how. Sales, marketing, operations, and customer service should all pool data so each team can take action to resolve customer-facing issues in the buyer journey or post-sale experience.
4 Steps to Customer-Obsessed Marketing
Using these planks as guidance, you can build a customer-obsessed marketing strategy. That begins with customer understanding – leveraging your knowledge to build buyer personas. Personas should include basic demographic information and common customer pain points.
With your understanding in place, you can position your solution. Here, you develop a unique selling proposition so you’ll stand out in your market. Your messaging depends on who your customers are, how they like to be addressed, and where they find you.
Third, celebrate your customers. Today, that means finding ways to put customers in the middle of the action. Encourage them to generate their own content, like photos and videos with your product, and promote that content on your brand platform. Capture those glowing reviews!
Finally, use customer feedback to create a positive cycle of enterprise-wide improvement. Collect surveys and do interviews – following up with customers who’ve had a wonderful experience and those who aren’t satisfied. Learn, tweak, and repeat.
AIMG can help you develop a customer-obsessed culture that keeps business coming back. Learn more about our exclusive business development consulting.