In a product-centric business, your goal is to find as many customers as possible to buy (and use) your product. In a customer-centric business, the goal is to find as many solutions as possible that address the needs of your customers.

Understanding ― and responding to ― the needs and wants of your customers is key to success in today’s marketplace. We often hear terms like “customer-centric” and “customer driven” used to describe the way in which businesses should operate. But most businesses struggle to operate in a customer-centric way.

Creating a customer-driven culture is always a work in progress.

Creating a customer-driven business requires company-wide buy-in and a shared commitment to defined values. Every employee, from sales to fulfillment to production to management, should share the customer-centric vision. Each person should have a defined role in understanding the customer and supporting their needs.

A big part of the commitment to a customer driven operation is continually listening to customers. This effort involves much more than an occasional survey. This effort relies on every employee who has contact with your customers.

You’ll need to work with each of them to effectively gather information. Learn what’s working for your customers; and what’s not. Discover their pain points. What’s going on in other parts of their business? Learn your customer’s business culture. And develop a customer awareness system to evaluate and share that information throughout your company.

Don’t rely on assumptions. Assumptions are often based on the input from “squeaky wheels” ― vocal, not necessarily representative, sources. Use your internal customer awareness system to short-circuit assumptions.

Educate Staff & Adjust to Meet Their Changing Needs
When it comes time to introduce new products or solutions, getting buy-in from sales staff can be difficult. Sales professionals, who have the most contact with your customer, understandably want a thorough knowledge of, and confidence in, any products or solutions they present and sell. That means representing new production capabilities can be a real challenge for sales staff. Another adjustment for them is that the growing use of digital imaging means more incremental work, i.e., a series of smaller jobs, with smaller commissions, will replace a single long print run.

Production employees also have challenges making the commitment. They should use the best available solutions for each task, but that can mean operating out of their comfort zone when technologies and applications are introduced. Implementing technology change is important for continued success, but it takes extra effort and comes with some risk.

The lesson here: Providing the training, education and support employees need to embrace new opportunity is critical to success.

Birds in the Hand …
Successful businesses are increasing the resources they allocate to in-account marketing and customer intelligence while spending less on new customer development, because keeping and growing existing customers has a higher return. The increased contact puts you in a better position to understand how your customer is changing, to anticipate their future needs and provide “customer-ized” solutions.

Strengthening your value with existing customers is key to building a successful, customer-driven business.