What is Customer Focus?

What is customer focus? In the Dictionary, it states, “Paying great attention to the needs and opinions of customers.”

Customer focus means?putting your customers' needs first. Customer-focused businesses foster a company culture dedicated to enhancing customer satisfaction and building strong customer relationships.

Customer focus examples include?quality customer support, developing the best solutions for the clients rather than the best products or services.

Recent studies show?96 percent of customers who are dissatisfied will never complain. Of those, 91 percent, never come back. Those who leave will tell at least 15 of their associates, colleagues, friends or business collaborates how disappointing your business is.

The simplest way to develop your customer focus is to get to know your customers:

·????????What are their needs?

·????????What’s driving their decision-making?’

·????????What are their goals?

·????????What are they feeling?

Encourage all colleagues to enable a sense of customer empathy. Take a walk in your customers’ shoes to assist you in gaining a new perspective on aspects of your own business you are not close to. For example, you as a business may be focusing on high-tech products as a value to the customer but what they are more interested in hearing is how it will help make their life easier.

It is a well-known fact that 73% of customers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations, but in the main only 51% do.

All companies should create opportunities for non-customer-facing staff across the business – from the CEO down who should spend time with customers or handle service calls to learn from their customers first hand. Surveys are a great way to understand what your customers really think about your business. A range of pre-set (open) questions that will give a better understanding of your customers preferences. These should not only be at corporate level but also at commercial and operational levels allowing a holistic view of your total offering. Another option is to implement a customer advisory board to meet several times a year to discuss business priorities, and strategy, sharing results of customer feedback throughout the business.

Social media monitoring. What is being said about your brand online is a useful tool for building a customer-focused mindset. Monitor direct mentions of your company, brand or product on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Internally your business may have localised barriers, silos, swim lanes, bubbles there are many terms, but the core issue is the same: Customer data lives in multiple systems owned by different departments, which leads customers to have a disconnected experience when dealing with your business. While 78% of customers say they expect consistent interactions across departments, their expectations are falling short: 59% said it typically feels as though they are communicating with separate departments, not one unified organization. About two-thirds (66%) of customers say they often have to repeat or re-explain information to different representatives.

Today we can track incoming revenue from sales, and we can track outgoing cash (expenses), but financial systems today are mostly incapable of tracking probable income that was lost due to customers switching to a different supplier or service provider. We have the technology, utilizing CRM (Customer Relationships Management) systems, to determine the lifetime value of a customer. We are lacking an interface that would allow us to quantify the lost value of a customer who defects.

While the quality dimensions from the customer’s point of view are varied and have to fit the service or the product, the five main dimensions are Functional, Social, Emotional, Epistemic and Conditional. These in the main are the basis for most customer-focused measures.

Being truly customer-focused, means businesses need to work toward building a complete 360-degree customer view. In doing so, it will be able to deliver unified cross-channel customer engagement.

Ultimately, creating a culture where customers’ needs are at the heart of every interaction, businesses create a compelling offer for customers and a significant competitive advantage over its competitors.

How do you improve customer focus?

1. Solve customer issues quickly and effectively by taking ownership
2. Value clarity. ...
3. Ensure your support team is available and accessible. ...
4. Use the customer journey to identify gaps, prioritize and fix roadblocks.
5. Share customer feedback with all areas of the business.
6. Make your customers feel heard. ...
7. Outline your customer experience strategy. ...
8. Start being more customer-centric.

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