Is Your Business Truly Customer-Centric?

Is Your Business Truly Customer-Centric?

By Mikesh Raithatha

Every business owner will tell you the customer comes first. Fewer can back that up with anything specific. It’s a conversation we often have with clients, and it’s topical as Customer is the theme running through our Quarterly Business Review meetings this quarter.

We’ve written before about five strategies for becoming more customer-centric: making things easier for the customer, personalisation, leadership that models the focus, using data properly, and staying willing to pivot as customer needs shift. Most owners already know the list. The harder question is whether it’s actually happening, or just assumed because they care about their customers and haven’t checked.

One thing that helps is having your own standard to hold the business to. Ours is built around what we call Awesome Service: build trust, be proactive, follow up on opportunities properly, and reply to emails and calls within 24 hours. It’s not complicated, but it’s specific enough that you can actually tell whether you’re doing it.

That’s the gap we see most often with clients. Not a lack of care, a lack of proof. Customer-centricity sits on the website as a value statement, but it doesn’t necessarily sit in the way decisions get made.

So, ask yourself:

1. What changed in your business this year because of customer feedback? If the answer is nothing, or you can’t point to the feedback that drove it, that’s worth sitting with. 
2. When did you last formally ask a customer what isn’t working? Not casually, over coffee. Actually asked, and actually recorded.
3. Does customer input reach the people making decisions, or does it stop with whoever heard it first? A frustrated comment to a junior staff member doesn’t count if it never goes further.
4. Would your team describe a recent decision as customer-led? If they’d struggle to name one, the business is probably talking about customer-centricity more than practising it.
5.  

None of this is about caring more. It’s about whether that care has a clear, repeatable path into how decisions actually get made.

Where are your opportunities? If you’re not sure how your business would answer these questions, or if you would like to discuss how our business advisory process could help your business, get in touch today on (08) 6212 7200.

Mikesh Raithatha is an Associate at Brentnalls WA, with experience helping business leaders across a broad range of industries to achieve business growth and improved performance. You can read more about Mikesh on our Team page, or check out some of his other articles, including Why Most SWOT Analyses Don’t Change Anything and How to Increase Business Revenue: 6 Proven Strategies.