Council Post: Always Putting The Customer First: Why Your Best Is The Only Option

Rotem Eylor is the founder and CEO of Republic Floor.

Putting the customer first can take many forms, such as refusing to compromise on a product’s quality or focusing on providing an exceptional customer experience. Welcoming and responding to feedback is another way to shift a company in a customer-centric direction.

While any one of those steps can improve your chances of success, the ultimate approach is stacking value in favor of the customer. In my experience, when products, services and the business’s overall strategy are all uncompromisingly customer-centric, companies experience the highest levels of success.

Getting there, however, is easier said than done. For most businesses, a complete shift in operational mindset is required. Rather than making quality your goal, it needs to become a process fully ingrained in your DNA.

To understand how this plays out, think about quality control. For many companies, quality control is focused on keeping poor quality from getting into the hands of their consumers. When quality is in your DNA, quality control instead involves keeping poor quality from seeping into your company because every decision is evaluated in light of how it will ultimately deliver quality to the customer.

Here are a few key steps you can take to elevate your business to a level where putting the customer first permeates everything you do:

Establish and invest in customer-centric core values.

Your values define your DNA. They let everyone—employees, consumers and all other stakeholders—know your “why,” which is what resonates with customers to foster their trust, loyalty and predictability.

Positioning your company as customer-centric starts with establishing values that put the customer first. Something along the lines of “customer-focused” is a good place to begin establishing these values, as this can be expanded to explain that everything you do starts with the customer in mind.

To build on “customer-focused,” you can include values like “empathy” and “understanding,” paving the way for encouraging (and acting upon) customer feedback. It also encourages your team to see things from the customer’s perspective.

After your values are established, they must be preserved, which is why ongoing investments in your culture are critical. Leaders and managers must strive to impart these values in everything they do, ensuring they are part of an effort that constantly celebrates values and commends those who embody them.

Ultimately, a customer-centric company should deliver products that it can wholeheartedly recommend to its employees and their loved ones. It will also provide a commitment to satisfaction that can be carried out with pride.

Articulate values, as well as features.

Capturing consumer attention in today’s fast-paced and noisy marketplace is challenging. Offering a customer-centric experience can help set your company apart as one that can be trusted, but your position must be communicated with clarity.

In your marketing, for example, don’t just promote product features, but also articulate your core values. This way, potential customers know who you are and what you represent.

Presenting data that illustrates why your product is the best option is valuable if your goal is making a sale. But if you want to earn consumer confidence, you’ll need to build trust, foster loyalty and maintain consistency. Presenting data that illustrates how you consistently carry out a customer-centric business strategy can help with that mission.

For instance, metrics like your Net Promoter Score and Customer Effort Score gauge your effort to put customers first. Sharing these can help to show your customers how committed you are to their needs—just make sure you do it in a customer-centric way because raw data alone won’t make the best impact. You have to make it relevant to your audience. Tell a story that illustrates the data and includes an emotional connection. In other words, don’t just show that you are producing good data; tell your customers how you are producing it and why.

Allow customers to hold you accountable.

When you choose to be customer-centric, you ultimately give your customer the authority to judge your performance. If they’re not satisfied, then your efforts at becoming customer-centric are not satisfactory.

Allowing customers to hold you accountable to your values starts with listening and responding to their feedback. It is vital to create a culture in which customers have access and influence.

One practical way to do this is to empower your employees to deliver exceptional service. When customers have a concern, they don’t want to be passed around from person to person in order to get it resolved. Give your front-line employees as much authority as possible so they can put the customer first as often as possible.

Going the extra mile is another practical step you can take to become more customer-centric. Having policies is fine—especially when they value the customer—but putting the customer first may mean that policies take second place.

While adopting a customer-centric stance for your business can put you in an excellent position to succeed, it may also require a new level of dedication. Build your core values with the customer at the center, commit to living them out in all of your operations and I think you’ll experience new levels of customer appreciation, trust and loyalty.

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