Is Your Company Customer Obsessed
The word “obsession” is usually used in a negative way, thanks to the unending list of movies and TV shows about obsessive personalities who either want to kill or kidnap. But when the same word is used for businesses and their customers, it becomes positive. We have Amazon to thank for first introducing the idea of “obsessing over customers” in 1997. The the term “customer obsession” resurfaced in Amazon’s list of Leadership Principles, and has since been buzzed about in the business world.
What Is Customer Obsession?
Customer obsession is a state of hyper-focus. It puts great emphasis on organisations deeply understanding its customers and using that information to better serve their needs. Does this sound similar to customer-centricity? Yes, it does. The main difference revolves around the intense feeling customer obsession ignites. You could be “customer-centric” and justify it by pointing to your dedicated customer research team. But to be customer-obsessed, every bone in your organisational body needs to work towards making your customers happy. This means deeply understanding them, collecting information and acting on it.
c2o customer obsession tip # 1:
Speaking with experience, customer obsession requires the same level of obsession with data. What does this mean? You can’t improve if you don’t measure.
Why Is Customer Obsession Important?
Customer obsession helps organisations with customer retention. Yes, you get to keep your customers because of your performance. When you make the customer your priority rather than focusing on your competitors or just finding a shortcut to making more profit, your customer will continue using your services.
Top 10 Questions You Should Be Asking Yourself If You Want To Become Customer Obsessed
1) How Important Is Customer Engagement For Your Organisation?
A customer-obsessed company will be fanatical about customer engagement as you cannot get to know your customers without communicating and gaining information.
2) Are Your Employees Empathetic?
To fully understand your customers, your staff needs to go in your customer’s shoes and think from their perspective.
3) Does Your Organisation Collect Customer Data?
Customer obsessed companies always collect feedback and actively listen to it as customer satisfaction is paramount to them.
4) Does Your Organisation Take Employee Engagement Seriously?
Wait, why are we talking about employees when our core focus is customers? This is the interesting part; if your employees are engaged then they will take the extra time needed to solve a customer’s problem. Whereas, an unengaged employee might go on autopilot without caring about the customer’s needs.
5) Is Your Organisation Customer-Focused?
This one can be confusing for many organisations as they feel that their customer care departments are completely customer focused-ignoring the fact that a customer-obsessed company practices customer focus by making each department understand that they all are a part of the customer experience.
6) Are The Right People In The Right Seats?
Your organization needs to have a team that believes in your mission as that will help your company reach its full potential. Start hiring people who believe that customer obsession is crucial for success and make sure that your managers are fully aware and on board with your agenda.
7) Do You Reward Your Employees?
As humans, we are apt to keep doing something if we are rewarded for it. If you want your employees to practice customer obsession consistently- you will need to introduce a process that is going to reward their performance.
8) Is The Leadership of Your Company Practising What It Preaches?
Leaders are in the position to enforce customer obsession from the top down. If they continue with their competitor obsession in business planning meetings then your organisation will not be able to fully switch to customer obsession. To create a customer-obsessed company culture, it must be modelled at the highest organisational ranks.
9) Have You Fully Researched Your Customers?
Customer obsession starts with understanding your customer goals and how your solutions can help them. A customer-obsessed organisation needs to adopt a problem-solving methodology and that might mean going outside of your comfort zone to win customer trust.
10) Are You Willing To Think Differently?
You can have the best team in the world but if you are unable to think out of the box then (sorry if this sounds harsh) you are set for failure. A customer-obsessed company consistently researches, collects and studies data and innovates according to it. Therefore, to be customer-obsessed you must believe in innovation.
c2o customer obsession tip #2:
To build a customer-obsessed culture, Leadership must make customers’ needs and expectations a priority.
We Are Customer-Obsessed
At c2o, we never forget that our job is about people. This might sound squishy but we strongly believe in customer obsession and provide the best business solutions to help them in any way possible.
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