Creating a customer-centric culture: Tips and tricks for success

Customer churn is expensive. Really, really expensive. U.S. brands lose $35.3 billion every year due to unplanned churn. Here’s where that number really hurts: that unplanned churn is caused by avoidable CX issues.

Missed CX opportunities = missed revenue.

So, where do we start? How do we ensure we impress at every turn in the customer journey so that we can reduce churn, boost revenue, and improve retention?

It’s not a one-and-done effort. It’s an organization-wide effort to embrace a customer-centric culture that leads to real results.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

Here are six ways to create a customer-centric culture that strengthens your customer experience for major impact.

1. Follow best practices in CX measurement

You need to first understand your digital customer experience to target the right improvements.

Measurement is critical to managing customer experience. Baselining your starting point helps you demonstrate that the changes you make are having an impact. Those changes must also be measurable to understand their efficacy and to make a case for continued investment.

We know we should measure CX. The challenge is in how we implement and manage that process. We’ve got you. Download our CX measurement best practices eBook for guidance.

Download the eBook: Best practices in CX measurement

2. Help your customer service team excel under pressure

We’re headed into a potential economic downturn. During uncertain times, customer service management faces more pressure, more accountability, and more scrutiny around growing the business through stellar service.

At the same time, customer expectations are at an all-time high.

And your customer service team is in the middle of all of this external and internal pressure. Which is awesome. Yes, it really is. Because you can lead your team to make a tremendous impact.

Focus on developing these four key skills to successfully navigate today’s challenges and thrive under pressure.

Read: Four skills to develop in your customer service team in hard times

3. Go back to the basics with digital customer service 101

We have access to more technology than ever before. And yet, many organizations are falling short when it comes to digital customer service: over half of U.S. consumers say customer experience at most companies needs improvement.

As technology advances, it’s essential that we maintain our focus on key objectives. You can use all the best tools and technology and still deliver a clunky, inconsistent, and frustrating customer experience.

Step back and consider how your brand, agent experience, and technology are contributing to the overall customer experience. We’ve created a high-level overview of core digital customer service elements in each of these three areas to help you bring focus to your digital customer service efforts and zero in on key areas that will have the greatest impact.

Read: Digital customer service 101

4. Invest in these four key areas to improve CSAT

If you’re striving to improve your Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) — there’s always room for improvement, right? — there are four key areas to invest in: leadership, budget, technology, and analytics. When agents have good technology and leadership, supported by a healthy budget, CSAT improves.

Here’s a look at where you should focus your efforts in each of these four pillars to yield the best results.

Read: Low CSAT? Better agent technology will help

5. Embrace customer centricity throughout your organization

Why Customer Centricity Delivers Great Customer Experiences

We’re at the point where prioritizing the customer experience is no longer optional. If you want to stand out in a homogenous sea of digital competition, you absolutely must cultivate a differentiating customer experience. It’s “impress or get left behind.”

Enter: Customer centricity. Customer centricity creates a seamless and enjoyable customer experience.

On the flip side, when there isn’t customer centricity, there’s friction. And that friction is a quick way to lose customers.

Deciding to focus on customer centricity is a no-brainer, but actually doing it isn’t so easy. Here’s a look at some of the common obstacles and how to get over them to become a more customer-centric organization.

Read: Why Customer Centricity Delivers Great Customer Experiences

6. Humanize your CX with empathy

As much as we’d like to think that we know our customers, we don’t. We know demographics and personas, but the actual, unique, real human person who is visiting our site — we don’t really know much about them, do we?

The truth is, the gap between customer persona and real person can be big. Companies that sell too much to the persona and not enough to the unique individual miss one of the biggest opportunities in digital: making the whole experience feel human.

Here are some ways to humanize your CX with empathy and a glimpse at how expensive it can be to get it wrong.

Read: Empathy: the Heart of Digital CX

It’s important to keep up with CX trends and insights while also staying grounded in strategy. Subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter for weekly tips, tricks, and stories for CX leaders aimed to help you improve the customer experience and exceed evolving consumer expectations.