It’s time to double down on customer-centric experiences that foster trust, loyalty, and growth.
According to the fourth State of the Connected Customer report, 89% of consumers in South Africa claim experience is just as important as products and services. In other words, you need more than a great product to stay competitive.
You also need to be a customer-centric business that provides personalised experiences across the entire customer journey. Regardless of where, when, or how your customers interact with you.
The definition of customer-centricity varies across industries. But every customer-centric business has one thing in common – they put customer experience first.
Why are customer-centric experiences so important?
For the fourth edition of our State of the Connected Customer report, we surveyed thousands of global consumers and business buyers. Hundreds of respondents were based in South Africa.
Our key takeaways? Consumer expectations have never been higher. Customers are both more engaged and less loyal. So they’re more than happy to shop around if it means getting a great service experience.
Fortunately, 78% of global customers are willing to forgive your mistakes if you follow up with an excellent experience. Moreover, 91% say positive service experiences make repeat business more likely.
Taken together, great customer-centric experiences still win for nurturing loyal, long-lasting relationships.
What does it mean to be customer-centric?
Putting the customer first isn’t a new concept, but the technologies helping change customer behaviours – such as mobile devices, the cloud, and artificial intelligence (AI) – enable businesses to personalise customer interactions in new ways.
In fact, 69% of consumers in South Africa say they prefer products and services to be personalised. But Matthew Sweezey, Director of Market Strategy at Salesforce, will be the first to tell you that personalisation is about more than just using a customer’s name.
“It’s about dynamically creating a personal experience at each and every moment. That includes the first search that helps customers ideate their needs to their final purchase and every moment in between.”
For example, customers may receive personalised recommendations based on their engagement history when browsing social media or even as a follow-up text or email offering personalised discounts.
In context, a hotel might use guest information to help personalise their stay – such as gym access or a preference for a particular type of pillow. While a fashion rental company might analyse subscriber data using AI to tailor the perfect outfit.
What does a customer-centric organisation look like?
Until now, many organisations have lacked the technology required to connect siloed departments – such as marketing, sales, service, and commerce – to enable a 360-degree view of the customer.
“Now that relevant and personalised engagement is a key differentiator, retailers will finally make the investments to deliver on the promise of putting the customer at the centre of everything they do,” says Rob Garf, Vice President of Strategy and Insights at Salesforce.
Customer-centric businesses are investing in cloud-based connected platforms to help digitally transform around the customer. One example is SEACOM, the telco responsible for launching Africa’s first broadband submarine cable system along the continent’s eastern and southern coasts in 2009.
After its landmark achievement, SEACOM began diversifying into selling enterprise technology solutions in South and East Africa. But first, it needed a cloud-based platform to help manage its customer journeys.
Today, SEACOM uses Salesforce to:
Automate manual admin tasks
Personalise the customer experience
Connect employees to a single customer view
Since deployment, it has reduced customer onboarding times from 21 days to just three.
“By removing the need for manual input, a huge chunk of admin time has been cut out from the process. It’s fantastic for the customer, which is the most important thing. We can start helping them sooner. It saves us so much time.”
Why do you need a single view to create a customer-centric experience?
We can’t talk about customer behaviour today without first addressing COVID-19.
With bricks-and-mortar stores shuttered, and remote working and social distancing an everyday reality for millions, digital-first interactions became a necessity. And it looks like things will persist post-COVID. We found that 72% of consumers in South Africa expect to spend more time online after the pandemic than before.
What’s more, 95% of consumers in South Africa expect you to have changed your strategy during COVID-19. So you’re going to need to think hard about your digital initiatives. Basic personalisation is all well and good, but to be truly customer-centric, you need to provide a connected experience across your entire organisation.
Today’s customers use an average of nine channels to browse inventory, seek advice, and purchase goods and services. So when your customer data is siloed across departments, it’s tough to deliver joined-up interactions across every channel or deliver targeted experiences at scale.
“When people say ‘customer experience should be owned by marketing,’ they don’t acknowledge that when a customer reaches out to talk to a brand, it’s usually to sales. And then if there’s a problem, they reach out to service – not marketing.”
With a single, 360-degree view of the customer, you could use:
Sales data to inform targeted marketing campaigns
Commerce data to provide fast, contextualised customer-centric experiences.
It matters less about who owns the customer experience and more about who implements it. And everyone in the organisation should be implementing it.
Trust is at the heart of customer-centric experiences
The importance of trust can’t be overstated in the customer-centric future. In our Trends in Customer Trust report, 95% of customers say their trust in a company makes them loyal.
But to gain their trust, you need to be transparent about how you gather, store and use their personal information. And back it up with ironclad privacy policies. If you use their data to push irrelevant messaging or products, you’ll soon lose that trust.
What’s more, it’s essential to consider how you adjust your customer interactions in times of crisis. For example, in South Africa, 54% of customers have become more trusting of a company based on its response to the pandemic. And 90% of global customers say how a company acts during a crisis demonstrates its trustworthiness.
At times like these, empathy and restraint can go a long way to retaining customer trust and loyalty. And that means context is everything. To be truly customer-centric, you need a clear view of the customer, so you can give them the help they need.
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