How do you incorporate your customers into your business strategy? For many businesses, products come first and customers come second—or even third. Business owners commonly begin with their product offerings, limitations, and capabilities first, then develop a strategy to convince customers they need it.
A customer-first approach begins with the customer, rather than the product. It puts customer centricity at the center of everything, from business philosophy to marketing communications and more. Many businesses discover that a customer-first approach improves customer experience, boosts brand reputation, helps customer retention, and increases brand loyalty.
Ready to explore the ins and outs of a strategy that prioritizes customers, above all else? Read on to learn how to develop such a strategy, key practices to employ, how to measure success, and more.
Understanding the customer-first strategy
A customer-first strategy puts customers at the center of your business. Businesses with a customer-first strategy think about their customers' needs at every stage of the customer journey and in every interaction. Then, they create strategies that satisfy their customers' needs.
Many businesses work from what's known as a product-first approach, rather than customer-first. Their product sits at the center of their strategy, rather than their customers. Their marketing efforts aim to convince their customers why they need their product, rather than developing a product and making decisions based on their customers needs.
A customer-first strategy offers a range of benefits:
- Improving customer satisfaction: Every element of a customer-first strategy is designed to reduce customer pain points and increase their satisfaction—and it works. Most businesses find that customer-first strategies have a dramatic impact on their customer satisfaction.
- Increasing repeat business: When customers find a product and a business that meets their needs, they'll come back. Putting customers first can reduce churn, increase customer retention, and develop loyal customers.
- Driving revenue: Along with an increase in customer satisfaction and repeat business comes an increase in revenue. Businesses with a customer-first mindset often find they drive a much higher ROI.
- Encouraging customer referrals: Customer-first approaches also tend to boost your brand reputation and increase customer referrals. When satisfied customers share their experiences with friends and family, you'll get marketing for free.
How to develop a customer-first strategy
It's clear: putting customers first can have a dramatic impact on your business. Ready to see what changing up your strategy can do for you? Read on to learn how to develop a customer first strategy and increase customer satisfaction.
Identify and understand your target customers
The first step of a customer-first strategy is simple: identify and understand your customers. To start the process, you'll need to define your audience.
If you have an existing customer list, analyze your customer data to learn about them. Look at information, like age, gender, and location, lifestyle, and interests. If you don't have an existing customer base, do some competitor research. Brands with product offerings similar to yours are likely speaking to the same customers. By understanding that customer base before you develop your products, you can make a product that meets their needs better than your competitors.
Once you've identified your customers, create buyer personas. These "mock" customers represent different subsets of your customer base and help you better visualize their needs.
Gather and analyze customer feedback effectively
Another great way to develop a customer-first strategy is by listening to your customers' feedback. Your customers' experience will tell you exactly how your strategy meets their needs—and how it doesn't—and that information is gold for your marketing strategy.
There are a number of effective ways to collect customer insights. Surveys are great for collecting quantitative feedback, while review widgets and online reviews are good for qualitative feedback. Social media is also a treasure trove of customer feedback and insights. Finally, your customer support team likely has great intel on what your customers struggle with most.
Once you've gathered feedback, it's time to sort through. Depending on the volume of feedback you receive, this process can feel overwhelming. It's important to remember that your product can't meet every person's every need. When analyzing feedback, look for trends and patterns.
Map the customer journey to spot pain points and opportunities
Now that you have your buyer personas and know more about your customers' experience, it's time to map out the customer journey. Break down your customers' path to purchase into each of its different stages. Then, take the time to understand your customer's specific needs and goals at each stage.
Correlate pain points identified in your customer feedback to each stage of the customer journey. Then, think about strategies to adapt your customer journey to eliminate those pain points.
Set customer-centric business goals
Your customers should be at the core of your business. Identify business objectives that focus on putting customer needs first, then strive to meet those goals.
Key practices to implement a customer-first approach
Looking for easy ways to enhance your customer experience and develop a customer centric approach? Adopt these key practices to put the customer first:
- Personalize communication and marketing efforts: No one wants to feel like they're just a number. By personalizing your communications and marketing, you can help them feel special. Personalization efforts can range from the use of merge tags to personalize emails to developing more precise marketing strategies that improve your customer experience.
- Deliver exceptional customer service consistently: In many ways, your customer experience team is the face of your business. They're who your customers turn to for help and guidance and are likely the only team members your customers will speak with. Each interaction between your customers and customer support team should aim to deliver nothing less than exceptional customer service.
- Empower employees to prioritize customer needs: A great way to ensure you're always satisfying customers is by creating a customer-first culture that empowers employees to put the customer first. That may mean having a little flexibility when it comes to return deadlines or offering a discount code as an apology for a poor experience. Allowing employees to offer your customers a bit of grace rather than strictly enforcing policies can drive repeat business and improve customer loyalty.
- Use data and insights to anticipate customer expectations: Anticipate your customers' expectations and pain points, rather than waiting to hear from them that you've failed to meet their needs.
- Create customer loyalty programs and incentives: Give customers a good reason to keep coming back. Loyalty programs and incentivized purchases are an easy way to influence purchasing behaviors.
Measuring the success of your customer-first strategy
It's not just about developing a customer-centric mindset, but making sure your strategy is working, too. Use these tips to measure the success of your customer-first strategy.
- Key performance indicators (KPIs) to track: Think about key metrics that help you identify how well your strategy is meeting your customers' needs, like churn rate, LTV, and repeat purchases. Then, create regular reporting to track these metrics.
- Collecting and acting on customer satisfaction and NPS scores: Open-ended feedback is important, too. Conduct regular customer satisfaction surveys and track NPS scores.
- Adjusting strategy based on customer feedback and behavior: Finally, modify your strategy based on your findings. Your customer-first strategy should always be refined to better put the customer first.
Common challenges and how to overcome them
When developing your customer-first strategy, you may run into a few road blocks. Here are common challenges businesses face and tactics to overcome them.
- Aligning internal teams with customer-first values: A customer-first approach needs to be at the center of every team in your business. Ensure that internal teams, from your marketing team to IT to customer service team, are well educated on your customer-first strategy and in alignment with overall business goals.
- Avoiding over-promising and under-delivering: Setting high customer expectations and then failing to meet them is sure to hurt your customer satisfaction. For a good customer experience, create a strategy that you're confident you can carry out.
Building a sustainable customer-first business model
A customer-first strategy may be just what your business needs to launch it to the next level. This strategy puts customer needs and customer experience at the center of your business strategy and decisions. Doing so can boost revenue, improve ROI, reduce churn, and increase LTV.
For a marketing platform that supports your customer-first approach, meet Mailchimp. Granularly segment your audience for more personalized marketing campaigns, integrate with leading survey and feedback software, and deliver exceptional customer service that meets customer needs. Start prioritizing your customers today with Mailchimp.
Key Takeaways
- A customer-first strategy puts the customer at the center of your business and strives to meet their needs above all else.
- By infusing a customer-centric approach into everything you do, you can boost customer retention, improve customer loyalty, boost ROI, and increase LTV.
- Once you've developed your customer-centric approach, it's important to continuously monitor its success and modify accordingly.