The Significance of Customer-Centricity in your Business Strategy
What does it mean to be a Customer-centric business, and why does it matter?
As humans, we have all experienced not feeling understood.
As business owners, stakeholders and even developers we all have opinions about the direction that a product should go.
Our opinions can be grounded in some form of reality. They can be formed by a potential increase in ROI, based on gaining new users or a myriad of factors. But the most important factor in business is “What do our users want”?
First principles: focus on the customer
What are the key principles of customer-centricity?
To be Customer-centric is to focus on the customer, to understand their perspective and empathise with their needs.
This enables you to anticipate and identify your customers' needs. It allows you to personalise your product to the user to help them adopt your product flow. It guides your decisions regarding continuous improvements to improve their experience of your product.
Knowing your customers also means you can respond to their requirements from a point of understanding, rather than reacting to an issue.
A lesson from CrossFit
Have you ever met someone who does CrossFit? If you have, you will know that whatever you are talking about, by the end of the conversation, you’re guaranteed to be talking about CrossFit… and most likely find yourself having signed up to a free trial.
Customer-centricity can convert your customers from being just users to being an army of product evangelists who will preach the benefits of your product to everyone they meet.
It’s never a bad thing to have a focus on adding new customers, but being customer-centric inspires customer loyalty and also increases customer satisfaction.
When you have a customer-centric business strategy, you are adding more seats at the proverbial table rather than adding customers to fill the vacant seats. You are experiencing true growth.
Retaining (for longer, or permanently) users of course increases the customer lifetime value and adding more customers to a stable, healthy user base will have a compounded effect on your profit margins.
Discovering the secret sauce
As a developer, I doubt I’m alone in believing that I do my best work when I’m working on projects that are delivering true value. Employees who are empowered to deliver positive customer experiences are more likely to be engaged and motivated in their work. Anyone who has spent time managing a team will agree that a happy, motivated team is an effective team. Click here to read more about how Brightec encourages a Happy and Profitable team.
We (as mobile app developers) are a unique breed. We thrive on information and knowing that there’s a data-driven reason behind what we’re doing. If we understand the “Why” then we can more effectively create the solution.
As a team, having an understanding of how your users tick can be a major factor in unlocking the secret sauce, focusing innovation and driving your product to the growth that keeps everyone (from developers to investors) happy.
Click here to learn about the role of customer-centricity in design.
Customer–centricity: foundation or façade?
Why Customer-centricity Should Form the Foundation of Your Business Strategy
Embracing a culture of customer-centricity empowers both employees and stakeholders to effectively serve their customers, building strong long-lasting relationships and increasing customer satisfaction.
In turn, this drives you to keep building more innovative products with a great reputation and ultimately aids you in building a sustainable, profitable company that employees love working for and customers love using.
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