Insight – customer Centricity
Happy to share more than 50 topics have
been written about in Insight which was started 1.5 years ago. Today’s
topic is much talked about in board meetings.
A recent “Customers 2020” report predicts that by 2020,
customer experience will overtake both price and product as the key brand
differentiator. Many say that it already has. In this article I will share what
some of the best companies are doing in customer centricity
- When it comes
to customer centricity “Amazon” is considered to be a forerunner. It comes
as no surprise that this value is driven from top. It’s a common knowledge
now that CEO Jeff Bezos leaves one seat open at the conference table and
states that the seat is occupied by the “the most important person in the
room – the customer”. What is important that he believes “Everyone has to
be able to work in a call center” so that they get insight into the
customer’s perspective. As such, each year he and thousands of Amazon
managers attend two days of call center training and field calls periodically.
This drives not only centricity but transparency and innovation.
- Customer
centricity is not only limited to “person to person interaction” though it
is an important aspect. Companies can do a lot with automation, process
and technology. An excellent example is of USAA, a financial group whose
customer base is primarily made up of military, retired military and their
families. Customer centricity approach led its banking arm (USAA FSB) to
put a high priority on developing and deploying checkscan technology,
which they did before almost any of their competitors. Why? Their
many members or customers who are deployed overseas, where mail home can
be painfully slow. Along with this they offer to text account balances –
an extremely helpful feature for soldiers in the field. This is an ideal
example of “listen, understand and act”. This philosophy is applied across
their insurance arm which provides discount on car insurance while
soldiers are deployed overseas. For claim their “My account” system provides
customers with the status of their car insurance claim 24/7 so they can be
informed as early and as often as needed. No wonder their NPS rates are as
highest among insurers and retention rates are in 90%’s.
- Social media
is becoming a great tool to drive customer centricity, Hilton
worldwide have identified this, they noticed 42% of hotel guests expect a
response to their post on social media within an hour and this increases
to 72% if it is a customer service related issue. Hilton has rolled out
policies and procedures to help meet these expectations. In fact, they
have taken this so seriously that they tweaked Conrad Hilton’s original
Hilton vision to, “Fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality
– one tweet at a time”.
Customer centric is a way of life as kevin stirtz author of loyal
customer says “Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not
they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them.”
In the coming articles we will look at more
example of customer centric organization
