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How to create a customer-focused culture
Most businesses like to claim that they have a customer-focused culture, but what does that mean? The answer will be subtly different in every case. If you want to make it work in your business, you have to understand your customers, understand their needs, and develop a vision that can address those needs – at every stage in their journey and throughout your organisation.
Get to know your customers
Nothing makes a customer feel more loyal than being recognised and welcomed as a friend. As companies get bigger, this gets more difficult to do, but what you can do is use surveys to get to know different customer groups and find out what’s important to them. This means you can do the next best thing and tailor your approach to suit these groups, so the vast majority of customers will feel that you understand them and share their concerns.
Take a holistic approach
Too many businesses assume customer service is just about front line staff, such as call handlers or checkout workers. In fact, it’s about everyone. Every individual who is part of your organisation should be familiar with your customer-focused vision and be able to act accordingly on coming into contact with a customer. When everybody shares the same approach, it’s far easier for front line staff to believe in it, rather than just following rules.
Get smart about hiring and training
Your customer-focused vision is something that should be on the mind of every person involved in recruitment, because your success will depend in part on hiring individuals who are a natural fit. Existing employees will need to be trained to make sure they understand the vision and can relate to the thinking behind it. This can include developing their understanding of different customer groups.
Let software take the strain
To keep track of individual customers better, and to know which groups they fit into and how to tailor communications to suit them, it’s really helpful to bring in customer relationship management software, such as Salesforce. Using a recruitment company that specialises in Salesforce contract jobs will help you get the right experts in your team so that you can translate your growing pool of data into a customer engagement strategy that really gets results.
Reward success
Even with the best software available, much of your success will still depend on the hard work and adaptability of your staff, so it’s important to reward those who embody your vision most successfully. The existence of rewards will show other employees that getting up to speed is worth their while, and will help them understand that making an effort in customer relations is about making the whole business stronger.
When your organisation functions in unison, customers can enjoy a seamless experience and really get to feel good about your brand. Knowing what to expect will increase their brand loyalty and their willingness to return to you when they need something new. It will help you turn your customer-focused vision into more than just a sales strategy – it will become a key aspect of what your company stands for.
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