Businesses that prioritize the requirements of the customers are more profitable and generate revenue faster than the ones that do not focus on customer experience.
Many businesses fail to deliver products and experiences that meet the expectations of their customers. According to IDG’s 2019 State of the CIO report, only 25% of CIOs say customer experience (CX) is their topmost priority. But, doing business digitally makes it even more accessible for customers to make a purchase elsewhere as they have a host of other options available.
To become customer-centric, businesses must focus on service delivery and rebuild their business strategy. Irrespective of the role they have in the company or the distance from the end-user, it is imperative for every department to understand their role when it comes to customer experience. Right from business modeling to revenue growth strategy, businesses must ensure to put customers first.
CIOs are accountable for ensuring the product development team is taking a customer-centricity approach. In order to successfully build products that customers will prefer over competitors, they need to note the major pitfalls and avoid them while mapping product development.
Siloed Insights and Absence of Alignment
Sales, marketing, and customer success have the least interaction with engineering teams. But, departments engaged with customers have qualitative and quantitative insights about the expectations of customers and their pain points. This data, in turn, is helpful in product development to customize products accordingly.
Also Read: Strategies to Minimize the Cost of Data Collection and Storage
To avoid siloed insights that create a lack of alignment, CIOs can follow the below-mentioned practices:
Share Data: The biggest barrier for teams to grow and become successful is CX metrics not being shared with all the employees in the organization. Integrated platforms like CRM solutions that help accumulate, consolidate, and share customer feedback inside the organization play an integral role in achieving customer-centricity.
Team Up: Customer teams must catch up with product teams on a regular basis. Marketing and sales also benefit from the engineering team since product teams know the solutions better than others. Promoting content that highlights the USP is essential to create buzz to pull potential customers.
Completely Task-Oriented Team
Businesses should follow a service-oriented approach rather than a task-driven one. Approaching deadlines and tremendous pressure from management leaves no room for innovation. The goal is not to finish the product development quickly but to satisfy and meet the needs and expectations of the customers.
Companies need to prioritize customer needs over getting the tasks done. To do that, organizations must welcome new ideas and ways of thinking. Also, they should encourage their employees to be a part of industry conferences as they can provide some innovative ideas and themes. Furthermore, leverage third-party reports and the media to obtain the latest trends, insights, and emerging capabilities.
Failing to Meet Evolving Expectations
Achieving customer-centricity is said to be a continuous venture and not a goal to be accomplished. Customer needs and technologies evolve at an accelerated rate. Companies that fail to keep up with the changing trends of customers often lose them to competitors.
Also Read: Organizations Are Prioritizing a Holistic View for Business Resilience Amid the Pandemic
Businesses can adopt the following practices to encourage a forward-thinking mindset that embraces evolving expectations:
Be empathetic and inquisitive: Whether it is building a new product altogether or planning feature enhancements, businesses should always seek feedback from customers. Knowing their issues with the product will help them to enhance their products further.
Adopt new ways to do business: Customers today prefer mobile and digital ways to interact with brands. Companies that do not embrace new ways of doing business, like shifting from desktop-first to mobile-first, may find it difficult to survive. Therefore, they should stay up-to-date about the latest technology trends with their key demographics and try to incorporate them into their product offerings.
Check Out The New Enterprisetalk Podcast. For more such updates follow us on Google News Enterprisetalk News.
Umme Sutarwala is a Global News Correspondent with OnDot Media. She is a media graduate with 2+ years of experience in content creation and management. Previously, she has worked with MNCs in the E-commerce and Finance domain
