Customer centricity and customer experience
If customer centricity is said to be the organisational commitment or strategy to assure the success of your customer, then customer experience is a set of customer perceptions across the customer journey. In other words, all the interactions with the organisation and its brand.
Customer centricity has for a long time been on the agenda, yet there are few companies that truly could be considered customer-centric. Why do so many companies then struggle to get customer centricity right? The reason is not a lack of data on customer needs and behaviour. All available reports show the opposite. Very few organisations manage to translate the data into increased customer centricity. There is also a discrepancy in the translation from customer insights collected by marketing functions to improved internal processes and operational functions. In our view, the single most common thing companies lack is an organisational culture that nurtures customer centricity. The culture remains product-focused or sales-driven and is not considering the differentiator among the hardest to copy: the customer experience.
What attributes on your touchpoints will increase customer experience?
Using the Kano model, it is possible to map all possible attributes of all features and touchpoints in order to visualise which ones are attractive, i.e. increasing customer experience. Looking at the overall drivers to obtain customer satisfaction, peace of mind is the strongest driver, which in its prolongation is connected to the time after purchase, where the organisation usually has less control of the process. How do we then assure peace of mind for the customer? By designing the moments of truth (most important touchpoints) along the customer journey so that they create peace of mind even after the purchase, for example by a strong service/support programme that comes alongside the purchase of the product or service.
This does not mean that we should stop focusing on the “must be”, attributes that our offering must include in order to give us license to sell. It is not either or, it is both. And it is both that will keep us ahead of our competitors.