Here is something you might not know about customer-centric businesses:
They always have loyal and dedicated customers. Customer-centric brands have made their business about improving customer experience, and their audience will continue to stick with them. In this article, we share examples of some customer-centric companies and what you can learn from them.
What Does It Mean To Be Customer Centric?
Being customer-centric, in simple terms, means putting your customers at the forefront of your business. Your products, your service, your digital experiences, and your physical store should put customers at the centre of everything.
By definition, Customer Centricity involves building meaningful relationships with your customers instead of just focusing on sales.
According to a study, customer-centric brands are 60% more profitable than non-customer-centric businesses. Also, 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a great experience.
To help understand what it means to be customer-centric, we have highlighted ten brands that embody this strategy.
10 Examples of Customer-Centric Campaigns and Brands
Here are some of the best brands and campaigns you can learn customer-centricity from:
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Amazon
Amazon has a tagline that says they strive to be the most customer-centric brand on Earth. We think they are doing an excellent job at this.
Amazon understands the importance of customer service and customer experience. This e-commerce brand improves the customer experience by offering features like personalised recommendations, one-day shipping services, and easy return service. Data shows that 35% of Amazon’s total sales come from the personalised recommendations they send customers. This recommendation is based on customers’ purchase history, recently viewed items, and items bought by customers who got similar products.
Amazon also prioritises customer reviews. They highlight reviews on all products and send emails to customers to get reviews on products they just ordered.
2. L’Oreal Paris
L’Oreal Paris is a beauty and skincare brand company that understands customer personalisation is essential. The beauty brand launched an AI app called L’Oreal Perso, and it helps customers try different shades of foundations and lipsticks without the need to go to a physical store. Customers can also upload pictures of their faces to get personalised skincare recommendations based on their type of skin and skin conditions like acne and hyperpigmentation.
This app has improved customers’ shopping experience and reduced the occurrence of them buying the wrong shade of foundation.
3. Fenty
Rihanna’s Fenty’s mission has always been customer-centric. The idea of the brand was to provide something suitable for all shades of skin and all types of women. Instead of the one size fits all approach that many brands push out, Fenty focused on creating something for everyone.
This makeup brand released 50 different shades of foundation for different kinds of skin shades. People can shop for a foundation with confidence, knowing they will find the exact shade suitable for their skin.
4. Coca Cola
Share a Coke campaign is one of the most popular marketing campaigns of all time, and this is because of the customer-centric approach it employs. Coca-Cola made customers feel special and inspired shared moments of happiness by printing out their popular names on the bottle’s label. A lot of customers felt a personal relationship with the brand and it felt like the bottles were personally customized for them.
Share a Coke was successful in driving more sales for Coca Cola than in any of their previous campaigns.
5. Starbucks
Starbucks isn’t just another coffee shop. It is more of a community, a space of peace between home and work. This coffee shop encourages customers to come in and use the patio, the restroom, and the space to hang out with other like-minded people, regardless of whether they want to buy coffee. Starbucks took it a step further by creating loyalty programs to reward regular customers.
Also, Starbucks often gets long queues, which can be very frustrating for customers who have to wait in line for several minutes. To curb this, the company created an online ordering app where customers could order.
In addition, Starbucks has a blog series called ‘To Be Human’, which provides insights into the lives and experiences of their customers. This series makes customers feel seen and shows the world that Starbucks isn’t just about serving coffee.
6. Zappos
Zappos is very thoughtful, and they find little ways to show customers that they care about their experiences. This shoe brand is big on identity and understands that, like many other things, there isn’t a one-size fits all approach to products.
They have customer representatives that help customers resolve problems in a self-directed and engaging way. Instead of the usual stoic voice at the end of a customer service line, people speak to representatives who genuinely care about helping them
Zappos also has a very lenient return policy, including a 365 window to return bought items.
7. PiggyVest
This Nigerian saving app was created to help people to set some money aside for themselves before proceeding with other expenses and bills. One of the things PiggyVest is known for is its customer support and the sense of community they provide for its users. For example, users can set up public savings challenges and have other users join the challenge.
Also, PiggyVest takes an extra step to celebrate customers’ wins with the ‘Saver of the Month’ series. They highlight a customer who was able to meet his savings challenge to serve as an inspiration to others.
8. Lululemon
Lululemon is an athletic apparel brand that motivates customers to reach their fitness goals and adopt a healthy lifestyle. Instead of just rolling up new styles of fitness wear, Lululemon developed a deep relationship with its audience. They offer tools and resources, including inspirational content, to help customers achieve their goals. This brand also highlights some fitness-focused customers to create stories to inspire the audience.
9. Wayfair
Wayfair has millions of home furnishings and decor. It can be overwhelming for customers to scroll through pages of products while looking for what to buy. To make things easy, Wayfair uses AI and predictive models to recommend relevant products for customers based on the buyer persona created by predictive analytics.
WayFair tracks customers’ actions, identifies their needs, and ensures that their recommendations are well-personalised on their e-commerce platform.
10. Hilton
Hilton is a hotel brand with more than 6000 properties across 119 counties. Even with their popularity and reputation, Hilton makes an effort to be customer-centric. One of the things they do is the Hilton Honor Guest Loyalty Program which offers customers an easy experience with bookings and staying. With the Honor Guest mobile app, guests can select rooms they want, book their stay, and check in and out. When they arrive, they can continue to use the app, order meals, unlock doors with a digital key, and unlock elevators. No one needs to worry about losing keys.
How Can You Be Customer Centric?
Being customer-centric means you don’t care about the profit alone; you also care about your customers’ experience. Customer-centric means constantly finding new ways to serve customers better.
At the end of the day, satisfied customers will become return buyers and likely stay loyal to your brand.
Amazon, Fenty, and Zappos are all big brands, and while you may not have the same budget as they do, you have the following tips to become a customer-centric company like them:
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Understanding Your Customers
One of the major parts of being customer-centric is understanding your customers’ needs, desires, and motivations. Once you have a good view of what your audience wants, expects, and values, you will be able to form an emotional bond with them. A good way to understand customers is by conducting market research and taking time on social listening.
2. Personalising Experiences
Customer centricity is also about personalising customers’ experiences. Your customers are humans with different needs, experiences, and preferences. Your audience may have similar personalities, but at the core, they all have some differences.
Personalising experience means offering each customer a unique experience and avoiding treating them like a monolith. For example, Amazon doesn’t send the same recommendations to all the customers. They personalise recommendations based on customers’ purchase history, similar products, and other personal data. If you bought a book, you are likely to receive recommendations for other similar books or accessories like bookmarks. If you purchase a skincare product, you will get skincare products as recommendations.
What are the personal preferences of your customers, and how can you communicate with them in a relevant way?
3. Create Value at Every Customer Interaction
Customer Centricity doesn’t have to be focused on just one part of your business. The best examples of customer-centric brands focus on customer interaction at every point.
When they are in the awareness stage, scrolling through your website, or adding to a cart, every part of a customer’s interaction with you should be customer-centric.
Also, you can make your products, customer support, sales process, delivery, and service as customer-centric as possible.
4. Measure Your Efforts
One of the best tips to stay ahead and improve your customer experience is measuring your efforts. What’s working for your brand? What’s not working for your brand? It’s essential to keep track of this to help you find new ways to improve.
Bottom Line
You can never know people completely, but the point of being customer-centric isn’t to know everyone completely. The aim is to identify your audience and learn a little about their needs and pain points so that you can easily take on customer-centric strategies.
