Could Your Company Be More Customer-Centric? Providing great customer service isn't good enough anymore. Successful brands need to be fanatical about understanding their consumers and solving their trickiest problems.
By Dennis Geelen Edited by Lisa Lombardi
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
If you are a business owner or business leader, please do not confuse good customer service with being customer-centric.
Sure, having great customer service is important, but it alone does not mean that you are customer-centric. If you are customer-centric then you are probably providing great customer service as a result. But it does not necessarily work the other way around.
You see, great customer service is only one of many byproducts of being truly customer-centric. It should not be seen as a 1:1 relationship, but rather 1 to many. Being customer-centric leads to sharper marketing and branding, enhanced customer experience, greater awareness of the strategies you need to keep adding value for your customers, and the list goes on. If a business sees great customer service as the only primary outcome of knowing and understanding their customers, then they are closing the door to so many opportunities to be truly customer-centric in all areas of their business.
To be customer-centric means you are intentional (maybe even fanatical) about knowing and understanding your customers so that you can solve their problems and add value. Your entire business, top to bottom, is built and revolves around knowing and understanding your customers.
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