Three Ways to Transform Your Business By Showing Customer Love

Customers today are more empowered than ever before. Thanks to social, mobile and cloud technologies, the walls that once separated companies from their customers are eroding. Empowered customers demand transparency—and they want to be part of the conversation.

That’s why brands need to treat customers with the respect they deserve. Business leaders—marketers, in particular—need to engage with their customers and show that they truly care.

Cultivating customer relationships provides enterprises with tangible benefits. In fact, companies who effectively engage with customers see an increase in customer retention and revenue. In the age of the empowered customer, customer centricity makes business sense.

Companies today need to commit to truly loving their customers. In an article for The Economist, I outlined three ways companies can do that. Here’s a summary of my main points:

1. Stop seeing customers as data points.

Customers are more than just data points. To make better business decisions, companies need to understand the motivations of their customers.

Data requires a human touch for it to be useful. Don’t let the wide availability of data hinder you from engaging with customers directly and frequently.

Yes, business leaders should use data to guide their decisions. But remember that loving your customers means treating them as humans and listening to what they have to say.

2. Look beyond social media analytics.

While social media has given customers a platform to broadcast their opinions, a deeper analysis shows that online conversations capture only a partial picture.

As Vision Critical revealed in What Social Media Analytics Can’t Tell You About Your Customers, the metrics you see in social media analytics are dominated by enthusiasts. This core 30 percent of social network users are responsible for 90 percent of posts captured in social media analytics. Overdependence on analytics tools effectively ignores the voice of a majority of your customers.

3. Treat your customers as partners.

Today’s customer knows more about your products and services than you do. In fact, they have so much information at their fingertips that they know more about your competitors’ products. Take advantage of that. Engage with your customers as your trusted partners.

And as we’ve seen time and time again, empowered customers are eager to share their insight with companies. Companies should listen and engage.

For more on this subject, I invite you to read my article in The Economist. And to get more tips on how to engage with the empowered customer, download our ebook, The Four Tenets of Customer Love.