Why Sri Lankan SMEs Should Follow Customer Centric Approach?
Production-oriented companies may produce a great product that no one wants. Supply meeting demand, quality output, mass production and many more traditional sense of approach taken away in this digital era. By being customer oriented company, your business‘s primary focus on customer needs and that drive marketing, sales and intern revenues.
If your business employed customer centric approach, you can position better to meet customers’ needs.
What is Customer Centric?
See the business world through the customer’s eyes. Placing customers at the very heart of everything businesses do. Customer centric is a way of doing business with customer in a way that provides a positive customer experience before and after the sale in order to drive repeat business, customer loyalty and profits. Basically customer centric refer putting customer first and at the core of business and company’s leadership must set the tone by making customers as business priority.
Why Customer Centric?
No business will survive long without satisfying its customers. It’s a simple fact. Most important asset of businesses is customer base.
Let’s start with bad example — United Airlines recent PR disaster to explain what happens when customer centric approach missing in business.
When a passenger was by force dragged from his seat, the world looked on horrified. The result: reputation and share price, plummeted. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and other social media spare the news. Internet offers phenomenal power to nominal customer. Consumer offline personal networks are small, but their online worlds are wide and deep, with lines of trust established depending on a person’s connections. Power of online damaging company’s reputation in society. The result of this bad review leads to huge business losses.
Good example for customer centric approach is Amazon. They spent years to create culture around the customer and their needs. Their commitment in delivering customer value is genuine. Therefore they continue to grow.
Key Steps Recommended to Sri Lankan SMEs to Implement Customer Centric Approach
· Listening to customers, helps SMEs to find ways to better serve them — Identification of the customer’s unique need will help to SMEs to beat competition from outside companies and gain revenue.
· Prepare a plan to execute and accept Customer centric approach — This plan will generally include the changes in values, goals and methods of company to achieve the customer centric approach.
· Presentation of the defined plan to employees — This requires presenting and explaining the customer centric plan to the entire company. After this presentation, the company needs to follow up and ensure that everyone is on board and ready to implement the customer centric approach plan (across the department).
· Institutionalization — puts into practice everything developed and presented to employees. To effective execution of customer centric approach involves orienting training, creating an employee rewards system and realigning the structure of power within the company to foster the new values and ultimately meet the customers’ needs within the market.
· Continue the change in the company implemented — Because Customer centric approach involves altering company’s culture. Employees take effect to continue meeting the needs of customers.
The Benefits of Customer Centric Approach to Sri Lankan SMEs
· By being customer centric companies will more likely develop products that match up with the needs of the customers.
· Customers will experience more satisfaction with the product, which ultimately increases the likelihood of repeat purchases and brand loyalty.
· With an ongoing customer focus, companies can also make adjustments over time in operations and ideas for product improvements and upgrades will observed.
· By adopting the customer centric concept, companies have all functions aligned with the strategic vision of meeting the needs of customers.
· Customer centric approach helps to define the role of employees more clearly. As an example, Production should focus on fine-tuning products to meet the needs of customers, Support and service should have openness to customer feedback to report back to production and research.
· When companies have a good understanding of what the market needs or wants, they have better ability to market effectively.
· Marketers research the market well to understand not only what is needed, but how to convey messages that clarify how their products align with those needs.
· Familiarity with the market allows marketers to build emotionally impacting appeals into ads and generate more business.
· Long-Term Profitability — Consistently understanding and delivering what the marketplace wants leads to long-term profitability.
· Companies can turn one-time buyers into repeat customers, with an ultimate goal of developing many loyal customers.
· Create Loyal Customers — Loyal customers buy more frequently and in larger volumes.
