Pitfalls to avoid while fostering customer centricity

It's common wisdom that the first and the most important stakeholder of a business is the customer. Without customers, a business has no purpose. More and more organizations today have realized this and have started focusing as much on delivering a positive customer experience as on offering great products/services. In other words, businesses today have become more customer-centric than before.

That brings us to the question, "What does it mean to be customer-centric?"

Leading analyst firm Gartner defines customer centricity as "the ability of people in an organization to understand customers' situations, perceptions, and expectations." In that vein, looking at and analyzing your offerings from a customer's standpoint, talking directly to customers instead of assuming their requirements, and implementing customer requests and suggestions to continuously improve your offerings are a few ways to practice being customer-centric.

However, there are a few things that might end up falling through the cracks when you embark on this journey of becoming a customer-centric organization. In this article, we'll look at some of the pitfalls you might face and how you can overcome them.

1. Confining your CX vision to a single team

The specific mention of "people" in Gartner's definition implies that customer centricity is a value that must be enshrined in an organization's culture. It means each and every business function—and even every employee—must uphold the spirit of customer centricity at all times. Yes, it's certainly a good idea to have a team that specifically focuses on improving customer experience, but the sense of responsibility towards customers shouldn't be confined to that team alone.

Therefore, take the following steps to make sure every single employee and business function takes customer centricity seriously:

• Communicate your CX vision to all employees clearly and regularly. Use real examples from your own organization to illustrate how being customer-focused has led to a positive experience. Share case studies from other organizations in your same industry or even other industries to find inspiration.
• Ensure your CX improvement team collaborates with other teams and helps them establish customer-centric thinking, practices, and processes.
• Make sure that internal customers also have consistently positive experiences. When employees have positive experiences within the organization, they'll be inspired to provide the same to customers outside the organization.

2. Over-promising and under-delivering

Sometimes, team members might get over-enthusiastic for the sake of being customer-centric and promise the moon to customers. The problem here is that if you fail to deliver on the promise, your customers will end up losing their trust in and respect for you. It could also lead to unpleasantness between teams—if, for instance, a sales executive promises a new product capability to a customer without first discussing it with the core development team. In other words, giving a quick yes when in doubt is as bad as giving a quick no.

Now, how can you avoid this pitfall?

• Make sure that employees in customer-facing roles know all there is to know about your offerings—both their capabilities and limitations. That way, they'll have an idea of what's possible and what isn't, and communicate with customers accordingly.
• Train executives to consult with core product/service teams about the feasibility of a customer request, if they're in doubt.

3. Not acting on feedback

We saw earlier how important it is to talk to customers directly and get a clear idea of their expectations and preferences. This feedback loop, however, isn't complete if you don't act upon or at least respond to the feedback. This is the next pitfall you should avoid, and here's how to avoid it:

• Use a robust, centralized feedback/voice of the customer management tool to track the feedback that customers send.
• Acknowledge to customers that you've received their feedback and explain your action plan to implement their suggestions. Include a tentative timeline if possible and set reasonable expectations. If the feedback is not feasible, explain politely and clearly to the customer the reasoning. This assures the customer that their voice was heard.
• Once feedback is implemented, let customers know about it and encourage them to share more feedback to help improve your offerings. This goes a long way in earning their loyalty.

4. Putting excess pressure on team members

In a customer-centric culture, it's a given that customers get the most focus, but this shouldn't be at the cost of your next most important stakeholders: your employees/team members. After all's said and done, it's your employees who take your offerings to your customers, right? You should therefore always, always ensure that your team members are in the right frame of mind and eager to contribute in a meaningful way. Employee satisfaction ultimately leads to customer satisfaction. So do these things to ensure your team members are not over-burdened:

• Ensure they have a good work-life balance. If you see someone overworking themselves even when it's not essential, make sure they take a break and come back fresh.
• Check on their mental health and have regular one-on-one meetings to identify any difficulties they might be facing. Show them that you care for them as human beings and not just as employees/team members.
• Implement technological aids that automate mundane tasks and free up time to spend on more important tasks and challenges.

5. Assuming the customer is always right

The adage "The customer is always right" is true most of the time, but not always. The rightness of a customer's claim can be verified in a product-based business because there are ways to simulate an issue and identify where something unexpected has occurred. The same doesn't hold true at times for service-based businesses, because there's always going to be that one rare, problematic customer who vehemently claims they were wronged. And in some cases, interactions between such customers and business representatives turn into "he said, she said" conflicts that can't be verified. How do you handle such difficult situations in a customer-centric culture?

• Get to the root of the issue and find out what exactly went wrong and who threw the first punch (figuratively, of course!). If your team member is found to be in the wrong, apologize sincerely and make amends. If the customer's claim is found to be wrong, try your best to make them understand that your colleague was right. Taking the customer's side even when they're wrong would certainly demotivate your team members and damage their morale.
• Don't be generous with apologies; only apologize if and when necessary.
• Make proportional amends and don't go overboard to pacify angry customers. This might set a precedent and lead to more unpleasant (and unwarranted) behavior.

I hope this article shared some valuable insights for your journey of becoming a more customer-centric business. What other pitfalls have you seen in your business and how did you overcome them? Please feel free to share them in the comments.