What Does It Mean To Be Customer Obsessed

Customer obsessed businesses are always thinking of new ways to better understand their clients. Furthermore, those organisations apply their knowledge and data to produce products and services that answer a customer's problem.

Organizations that are obsessed with adding value to the customer experience are said to be customer-obsessed. These businesses collect feedback regularly and make client needs a priority in every business goal. They're more concerned with retaining and delighting existing customers than acquiring new ones.

What Is Being Customer Obsessed

Customer Obsession entails listening to consumers regularly to enrich and improve the customer experience. Client obsession necessitates a paradigm shift in how a company views customer interactions, whereas customer service is only a function of doing business.

The goal of customer obsession is to increase customer retention and loyalty. Your customers will become more reliant on your brand if you keep enhancing the buyer's journey. They may believe that your company is looking out for their best interests, which boosts their chances of making repeat purchases and becoming a loyal customer.

That is to say:

  • Everything you do revolves around the needs of your customers.
  • Everything about the customer experience, from sales to marketing to support, is centred on these requirements.

Characteristics of Customer Obsessed Companies

This section outlines some of the commonly found characteristics in businesses that lead a customer obsessed culture.

Prioritising Customer Retention Above Acquisition

For customer-focused businesses, this is the most important differentiator. Most companies concentrate on marketing and sales to attract new consumers and close as many deals as possible.

Customer service is implemented throughout the buyer's journey, and they strive to build genuine relationships with leads and customers. Once a sale is closed, the company adds more value to the customer's experience, increasing the likelihood of that client remaining loyal. After all, keeping a customer is five to twenty-five times less expensive than gaining a new one.

Quality Over Quantity

Customer-obsessed businesses are more concerned with their relationship with their users than with the number of their customer base. Instead of three rapid sales that would likely churn after a few months, they'd rather seal a deal with one devoted user who will return again and again.

If you want to become a customer-centric business, you must focus your efforts on customer relationships and long-term customer success. This will result in a mutually beneficial relationship that leads to increased satisfaction and repeats sales.

Your customer care department isn't the only one that is obsessed with customers. Customer service must be implemented throughout your organisation, and all teams must be aligned with customer success. This will enhance the consumer experience from start to finish, including before, during, and after the transaction.

Efficient and Proactive Customer Service

Proactive customer service entails resolving issues before they arise for your consumers. This makes customers realise that your company is watching out for them even if they aren't at one of your establishments. There are a few different ways to include proactive customer service into your team's daily operations. To begin, you can utilise email automation to send follow-up emails when a purchase is made. These messages check in with the user to see how they're doing and offer support alternatives if they have any questions or need assistance.

You can also use self-service technologies to provide assistance resources to customers who don't want to talk to your staff. Customers save time with tools like knowledge bases and community forums that provide troubleshooting steps for basic or common problems. As a result, your clients won't have to contact your support team for minor difficulties or concerns.

High Focus on Customer Feedback

Analyze it for trends, seek for problems that are frequent, and, most importantly, share your discoveries with the rest of your company. Data silos that prohibit other teams from obtaining critical information are the last thing you want. That information can assist your marketing, sales, and customer care teams seize opportunities to please your customers at the right time.

It's critical to conduct a survey of the people who matter the most: your customers, before making any modifications to the customer experience. Inquire about their experiences shopping at your stores and on your online. Use NPS® (net promoter score) surveys to collect quantitative and qualitative feedback so your team can make educated policy and protocol updates. Taking something away is the last thing you want to do.

How To Establish A Customer Obsessed Culture

Research On Customer's Needs And Wants

Understanding your customers' goals and how your services may assist them is the first step toward customer obsession. You should conceive of yourselves as problem solvers, assisting consumers in achieving their goals – which may require thinking outside the box. Because your offerings may not always be what your consumers require, you must approach the research phase with a customer-centric mindset. Even if you can't directly assist them, you should always look for ways to assist consumers in assisting themselves, displaying your commitment to their success and your desire to establish a long-term relationship.

Putting Your Knowledge Into Action

Merely just studying your customer isn't enough. The study should provide information that is relevant to your customer's personal objectives and business. Understanding that your customers are individuals with their own interests and objectives. The better we understand what motivates our customers on a personal level, the better we can make our business decisions to accommodate the customer in achieving their goals. This understanding should also influence your conduct and communication style. You should think about what would make each customer feel more at ease. It is your job to modify your communication style to better communicate with your customers, especially if your communication styles are different.

Commitment To Being Customer Obsession

Customer obsession refers to an organization's desire to uncover and respond to customer needs as quickly as possible. Many businesses currently prioritise addressing consumer requirements, but they make the fundamental error of failing to do so in real-time. According to a recent DMS study, organisations are seven times more likely to close a sales opportunity if they contact a consumer within an hour of receiving their contact. Unfortunately, two-thirds of businesses do not have a mechanism in place to provide the real-time touch that their customers require. This can be costly; today's customers have a powerful voice, and bad news spreads quickly via the internet and social media.

Hiring The Right Person For The Job

While technical skills are significant, but they do not reveal whether they possess customer obsessive characteristics. Technical skills can be taught, but personality is something you can't change. A customer-focused team is one that has the ability to work quickly. Customers expect quick service, therefore service providers are expected to be at that speed to keep your customers happy. In addition, you need to understand that the devil is in the details. If you want to build a customer-focused team, you'll need to hire people who have a keen eye for the finer points of customer service.

Measuring The Effectiveness Of Becoming Customer Obsessed

Employees need to know the issue they should be concerned about. Customer satisfaction and tracking the customer's connection with the firm are the most crucial KPIs for a company that prioritises the customer over all else. While evaluating a company's customer experience, customer loyalty cannot be missed. When a customer prefers your brand over someone else's, this can be the best indicator that your company is creating a loyal customer base. Customer retention should be measured too. Your customers are delighted if you have a high retention rate, which implies your customer-first strategy is working. However, something is proved to be wrong with your customer's experience when a large proportion of them are contacting you for assistance. Knowing your customer's needs before they contact you is the first step towards exceeding customer expectations.

Effects Of Being Customer Obsessed Towards Revenue

It is all about intent and results when it comes to being truly client obsessed. According to Forrester's study, customer-focused businesses develop at a faster pace across multiple industries. Even a minor improvement in customer satisfaction can have a large influence on income. You must transition into data and insight-driven businesses to excel at customer obsession. According to Forrester, companies that are driven by data and insights are 39% more likely to report revenue growth of 15% or more year over year.

Customer Obsessed Companies

Any company, no matter the size, location, or industry can be customer obsessed.

Amazon

Jeff Bezos credits much of Amazon's success to its 4 key core values. The first, he listed. Customer obsession.

"The first and by far the most important one is customer obsession as opposed to competitor obsession. I have seen over and over again companies talk about being customer-focused, but really when I pay close attention to them I believe they are competitor focused, and it's a completely different mentality, by the way"

Customer passion isn't something that customer service, or any other team, has to earn on behalf of the entire company. Every department should be focused on the consumer. And the ripple effect begins at the top and works its way down.

Disney

There are numerous instances where Disney goes above and beyond to provide world-class customer service. Everything they do reflects this, from treating all visitors to their parks as VIPs (Very Individual Persons) to expertly educating their personnel.

But, before any of that could happen, Disney's leadership had to make the crucial decision to become a customer-centric organisation (though they probably didn't say it that way). It was Walt Disney himself who made the choice to do so.

“Another kind of cool little point is he (Walt Disney) wanted to keep his park clean. So, he hired people to stand there and see how many steps a person would take before throwing their trash on the ground and not getting to a trash can, let's say. And that answer was 30 feet. So if you go to any Disney park, there's a trash can every 30 feet.”

PayPal

PayPal not only makes its customer privacy policy public and notifies consumers of upcoming changes, but it also explains what personal data is collected, how it is processed, and with whom it is shared. Plus, if Paypal detects any unusual activity on your account, you'll be notified immediately. Consumers are "more ready to buy" when PayPal is offered as a means of payment, according to a 2018 Ipsos Global Research survey, especially in unexpected scenarios such as across borders, on mobile, or with unfamiliar companies. According to the same report, 59% of PayPal users have abandoned a transaction because PayPal isn't available.

Microsoft

Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office software packages have long been well-known. Those high-quality products aren't going away, but in recent years, Microsoft has focused more on innovative services, such as Azure Cloud, Microsoft's infrastructure-as-a-service business. It's a one-stop shop that's allowed the company access to consumers in the healthcare, retail, and financial services industries, as well as the ability to operate remotely.

“Digital technology today is not about tech companies doing innovation. It’s about the rest of the world doing innovation with technology, and Microsoft is uniquely in a position to enable that.”

Conclusion

Being customer-centric is to be expected by almost every business today but only exceptional businesses that are consistently expanding are customer-obsessed. Customer obsession is a process that takes time to integrate into your corporate culture. It all starts with strong leadership that sets the tone and leads by example. When each member of your company follows customer obsessed culture, your customers will happily continue to come back to your company.

References

What is Customer Obsession

How To Establish A Customer Obsessed Culture

Customer Obsessed Companies

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Written by Pinky

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