It seems like every business these days is talking about customer experience and how it will revolutionize their industry. Whether you own a digital agency, a software company, or a small business, you probably care about building your brand and staying ahead of the trends. After all, what good is a product that no one else has? As customers become more discerning with their purchasing habits, businesses must step up their game to stand out from the crowd. That’s where customer obsession comes into place.
Just as obsessive-compulsive doesn’t simply hand in their dirty laundry, businesses that aren’t customer obsessed won’t be around forever. In this blog post, we’ll cover everything you need to know if you want to implement customer obsession in your business.
What Is Customer Obsession?
Customer Obsession is the practice of treating every customer like a VIP. It usually involves personal service, emotional intelligence, and creativity. When you’re obsessed with customer experience, you want to meet your client or customer’s needs in any way possible, even if that means doing something outside your everyday responsibilities.
Customer obsession is a mindset where the business holds its customers as a priority above all else. You must identify what it means to be customer obsessed to implement this mindset into your business.
Next, we will discuss five priorities to help you start implementing Customer Obsession.
Priorities Of A Customer-Obsessed Organization
Customer Obsession is a philosophy of intense customer-centricity. It’s about focusing on your customers and ensuring they feel respected, appreciated, and cared for. Here are the top priorities of a Customer-Obsessed organization:
1) Caring About Your Customers
A company must care about its customers to make them satisfied based o their expectations. This means listening to who they are and what they want, striving for excellence in every interaction, and being responsive to any problems or concerns they may have.
2) Prioritizing Information Over Promotion
When you prioritize information over promotion, you’re not competing with other companies for mindshare or only spending money on ad campaigns. Advertising can be expensive, but if you know your target audience well, you don’t need to spend much money. You will get the word out about your product or service.
If your company doesn’t have the budget for promotions, it needs to use information instead. In this case, information includes everything from website content to social media posts.
3) Providing Instant Value For Money
We all want our hard-earned dollars to go as far as possible when we shop online. That means a Customer-Obsessed business makes sure that its products or services provide instant value for money and build long-term loyalty with customers who see an immediate benefit from using the product or service provided by the company. This also means giving back something, offering discounts or bonuses.
4) Being Friendly & Engaging
Be friendly and engaging with your customers by understanding their wants and needs before they voice them to you. Look at your website analytics to survey what people are looking for when they visit your site. This will help guide where you need to focus your time and resources.
5) Providing A Great Experience
Make sure everyone who contacts you has a fantastic experience from beginning to end. Whether through live chat or email, make sure that people feel valued when interacting with you online or offline. This is important because it creates a sense of loyalty within the company, making them more likely to return.
6) Providing Above-and-Beyond Service
Customer obsession describes the dedication and focuses a business puts on satisfying its customers. This dedication often goes above and beyond what is required to meet customer needs. It’s not just about meeting the bare minimum but exceeding expectations in every way possible.
This level of service is invaluable to businesses. Not only does it make customers happy, but it also builds trust and loyalty. Customers who feel like their needs are always being met are more likely to come back and recommend your business to others.
There’s no question that customer obsession pays off for businesses. However, it’s not easy to achieve. It takes a lot of hard work and commitment from management teams. But if done correctly, it can be one of the most powerful tools available to businesses.
Main Characteristics Of Customer Obsession
From a business perspective:
In business, customer obsession is the key to success. This term refers to the focus of companies on their customers and how they can best serve them. A few main characteristics of customer obsession are essential to understand.
- First, businesses should always look for ways to improve their service and product offerings.
- Second, businesses should constantly innovate new ways to connect with their customers and bring them closer together.
- Finally, customer obsession requires a passionate commitment from all team members, as it requires dedication and effort from everyone involved in the business.
From a people perspective:
People applying a customer obsession strategy always look for ways to improve the customer experience. They are always trying new and innovative ways to improve their business. Also, they are constantly thinking about how they can make their customers happier. Often there are creativity and innovation in their thinking.
Customer obsession often leads people to become very passionate about their work. They can be very committed to making their customers happy. This commitment often leads them to do whatever it takes to satisfy their customers. They may even go beyond what is required to ensure the customer is happy.
Customer obsession can be a very beneficial quality in a person. It can lead people to become very successful in their careers. It also can lead them to find new and innovative ways to improve the customer experience.
What Is The Difference Between Customer Focus And Customer Obsession?
First, let’s define these terms. Customer focus is paying attention to the customer. This can be seen as listening to what customers say and understanding their needs. A customer-obsessed business has a deep connection with its customers and always strives for better results.
While it might seem like this might be more complex, it’s actually relatively easy and goes far beyond just doing the bare minimum to meet your customer’s needs.
A customer-obsessed business will always strive for something bigger than its competition. It will always go above and beyond to ensure that it gets the best possible outcome from every interaction it has with its clients or customers.
What you need to do get from a customer focus to a customer obsession strategy:
- Explain the importance of personalizing each interaction with an individual (client) to build a strong customer relationship.
- Discuss why having a customer-obsessed culture is a good idea for businesses.
- Outline strategies for setting up this culture.
In the next section, we will discuss further how to build this culture of customer obsession.
How Can You Implement A Culture Of Customer Obsession?
To start, you need a clear understanding of customer obsession.
First and foremost, it means being focused on the customer’s happiness. It means putting them first and ensuring they get the best experience possible with your product. It also means providing superior customer service no matter what.
If you can do these things consistently, you’ve achieved a culture of customer obsession, and your business will grow. Here are some ways to start:
Keep track of how your customers feel when they interact with your company online or in real life.
Ask customers how they feel about your company after their interaction – Provide feedback to customers who email or call you.
Conduct regular surveys to find out what makes your customers happy about interacting with you
Steps For Implementing Customer Obsession In Your Business
Implementing customer obsession in your business is a process and not an event. For one thing, it’s vital to understand that being obsessive about your customers doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to do everything for them.
As with any other skill, practice makes perfect. To keep up with the customer obsession trend, you should start with customer experience surveys following a clear set of steps.
- Collect data from your customers via surveys.
- Analyze the data collected through the surveys and identify trends. What your customer wants, needs, wants, values, and requires. -Create a customer obsession model with personas.
- Set your goal for customer obsession by analyzing your brand and identifying the types of customers you want to target.
- Create a detailed plan for customer obsession which includes the following components: Branding, Content Marketing, Customer experience marketing (CEM), Sales & marketing technology, Marketing automation, and Communication strategy.
- Keep the company focused on customer needs through consistent communication.
- Test new strategies as they are developed and implement them only if they are successful.
- Get feedback and improve it by restarting the steps.
The key is to start slowly and build up from there. Learn customer feedback and business KPIs. Check improvements with your changes on customer strategies and apply changes where needed. That way, you will build a customer excellence cycle that helps you keep the customer equity you need to thrive.
What Prevents A Business From Being Customer Obsessed?
Many businesses get caught up in the day-to-day work and forget about the customer experience. Before you know it, your company has a bad reputation, and your product has lost value.
You’re not alone — some common factors prevent businesses from being customer Obsessed: You don’t clearly understand whether your customers are happy or unhappy.
You don’t know which customers are valuable to you, so you never prioritize them. Also, you don’t ask how they would benefit from your product or service.
You don’t make time for marketing because you think it is a waste of money, but this is one of the most essential things that can lead to success. Marketing doesn’t mean only promoting your product or service, but using consumer insights to create them, satisfying customer needs, and solving their problems. A company that doesn’t apply these techniques may be incurred in marketing myopia.
Why Is Customer Obsession Important?
If you want to stay ahead of the trends, you must ensure that your business is constantly evolving. And that means listening to what your customers want. The more you implement customer obsession into your business, the closer you’ll be to ensuring everything is perfect for them, from their shopping experience to their delivery experience.
When a customer shops online and loves their experience, they’re going to be more loyal and willing to spend money with your company in the future.
The opportunities are endless when implementing customer obsession into your business. From getting a better sales conversion rate to increasing brand awareness, it’s no wonder why so many companies have been moving towards this approach lately.
Ideas And Model For Customer Obsession
For example, if you are an e-commerce store, start offering free shipping on all orders for a month so that people have the chance to experience your service before paying for it.
There are several other ways you can show your customers that you care about them:
- Offer special promotions.
- Make sure the process goes without any headaches.
- Take feedback seriously.
- Respond promptly.
- Provide excellent customer service.
- Implement loyalty programs or progressive discounts.
How To Measure Customer Obsession
To start implementing customer obsession in your business, you’ll first have to be able to measure it.
These benchmarks will help you understand how obsessed your customer base is with your product or service and how well you satisfy their needs.
Here are some essential KPIs to measure.
1) Check For The Number Of Customer Reviews On Social Media Platforms
Social media has become a highly valued source of reviews for products and businesses, giving you an idea of how much customers are talking about your brand online.
If people are saying great things about your brand, this shows a high level of trust in your company and what they offer. It also indicates that the quality of work done by your company speaks for itself.
2) Determine If Customers Are Using Words Like “Best,” “Awesome,” Or “Amazing” When Talking About Your Product Or Service
After asking customers these questions they’re consistently using words like best or awesome, so they are likely satisfied with their purchase.
They know that the service provided by the product was satisfactory enough to deserve those kinds of words. If customers aren’t using these adjectives, then it’s time to reevaluate the problem areas of dissatisfied consumers.
3) Determine If There Is An Increase In Repeat Purchases From Consumers
This information usually allows companies to build loyalty programs that make consumers eligible to earn rewards for repeat purchases over specific periods. It’s a basic measurement to understand if your customer obsession culture is working well.
Bottom Line
It’s important to know what customer obsession is. A customer-obsessed company takes the time and invests in its customers. They try to go above and beyond for their customers by giving them the best experience possible.
Customer obsession is a powerful tool that can help businesses increase revenues and profits. However, it takes time and effort to create an influential customer-obsessed culture.
In this article, we talked about customer obsession’s meaning, importance, and implementation, among other steps to make it useful for your business.
FAQs
What Is Customer Obsession?
Customer Obsession essentially means paying attention to your customers to the point where you understand their needs, wants, and desires.
When a business is focused on its customers, it can be seen as providing excellent service and exceeding expectations.
Understanding your customers and their needs is an essential strategy for businesses, as it allows for effective marketing campaigns and the development of new products and services that are fit for purpose.
It can also help companies attract the best employees and grow their brand recognition and customer loyalty.
Why Is Customer Obsession Important?
One of the best ways to build a healthy business is to understand your personal and business values. This will help you create a brand that represents you in your personal and professional life.
As for why Customer Obsession is so essential, it can be summed up in two words: customer intimacy.
When a company’s customers feel cared for, understood, and valued, they are more likely to recommend your products and services to their friends and family. In turn, this will drive more sales and make you the envy of your industry.
How To Measure Customer Obsession?
It’s funny to think about how far the customer experience has come in the last decade, but, it was a novelty at one point. For many businesses, what started as an attempt to take advantage of consumer trends became an obsession with delivering fantastic customer experiences to win over and retain their loyalty.
Today, with the proliferation of SaaS applications like Google Analytics and Amazon Web Services, it’s easier than ever to get a sense of your customers and what they value.
What’s more, the tools and resources are practically free. So, today’s question is simple: How do you measure Customer Obsession?
Christian has over ten years of experience in marketing agencies. Currently, he has been dedicating his time to a tech startup and also writing for major publications. He loves podcasts and reading to keep up with the latest trends in marketing.