When you think of magical customer experiences, one particular brand probably comes to mind: Disney. Exceeding customer expectations rather than merely satisfying them is at the heart of the Disney approach — so much so that Disney created a dedicated handbook, Be Our Guest, to help guide other brands on their quest to perfect the art of customer service.
It’s that level of customer obsession that has garnered them a 70% return rate of first-time Disney visitors and over 85 years as one of the world’s most trusted brands.
From retail to tech, customer obsession is a foundational mantra that helps businesses excel. Let’s explore why this is the case and how customer obsession can benefit your business.
What is Customer Obsession?
Customer-obsessed organizations care first and foremost about one thing: constantly optimizing the customer experience (CX). They work continuously to collect feedback, understand consumer needs and improve every interaction.
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In doing so, businesses deploy a top-to-bottom customer-centric philosophy. From sales and marketing to frontline workers, the goal is to understand what consumers want and deliver on those needs in a way that doesn’t just satisfy customers but delights them.
More than a strategy, customer obsession is a business model. By generating trust, commitment and loyalty, organizations can build a sustainable competitive advantage that keeps customers coming back for more.
Why is Customer Obsession Important?
Have you ever wondered just how costly a bad experience actually is?
According to recent research, nearly $4.7 trillion is squandered every year because of poor customer interactions. Furthermore, 74% of consumers say they’re likely to buy based on experience alone.
Bottom line: CX management is a make-or-break initiative. But with a customer-obsessed mindset, you can steer your organization in the right direction.
Here are a few ways a customer-obsessed philosophy can help drive better business results:
- Retention: When consumers feel heard, seen, and valued, they’re more likely to stay with a brand over the long term. This is especially significant given that 71% of consumers switched brands at least once in the past year, often because of poor customer experience.
- Lifetime value: Decreasing churn allows you to increase customer lifetime value — the total revenue a consumer generates over the duration of the brand relationship. By exceeding expectations and delivering on your promises, you can drive repeat purchases and cross-selling opportunities.
- Acquisition: More than two-thirds of consumers are likely to recommend a company based on a single interaction. In short, satisfied customers are more willing to become brand advocates and refer others, thus increasing profitability and lowering cost-per-acquisition.
- Reputation: Word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire. With a strong reputation for positive CX, you can earn more brand exposure, credibility, and organic growth — three assets critical to winning new customers and keeping them for the long haul.
While it’s undeniable that being customer-obsessed is critical to any business, a recent Forrester report found that only 3% of respondents were fully customer obsessed — meaning every department, every team and every employee was fully dedicated to the customer’s point of view.
Strategies to Build a Customer-Obsessed Organization
Customer obsession is a top-down commitment that requires buy-in across the org chart. It’s not going to happen overnight, but with a few strategic decisions, you’ll be off to the races in no time.
Here are a few valuable ways to build a more customer-obsessed organization.
Impart empathy to your contact center.
Imagine calling in to a support desk, waiting on hold for seeming hours on end, repeating your issue over and over, and being redirected to the wrong department. Finally, you’re speaking to the person who can fix your problem — unfortunately, they treat you like your problem doesn’t matter. That’s a bad customer experience.
In a lot of ways, customer obsession is rooted in just the opposite. To be obsessed with your customer is also to be obsessed with empathy — for their feelings, their situation and for where they may be in the customer journey. Coaching employees — especially your contact center agents — to flex their emotional intelligence can make a huge difference. Seek to understand customer pain points so that you can develop solutions and experiences that leave a positive impression on your audience.
One way to ensure agents are practicing empathy is to analyze their call transcripts. Some contact center solutions automatically transcribe conversations, allowing supervisors to comb through the content and uncover any points of improvement.
Embrace a customer-first culture.
Place the customer at the heart of your company. Every decision, action and process should be driven by a deep understanding of and commitment to meeting customer needs (and exceeding their expectations).
Many enterprises are already focusing on this area. Take Cover-More Trav, a global travel insurance company. With over 15 million customers globally, Cover-More knew in 2019 that it would have to place the customer at the heart of everything. When the pandemic hit, the company’s forward thinking paid off. Having already upgraded its contact center technology and communications stack, the enterprise was well-positioned to offer an omnichannel, seamless customer experience at every opportunity.
Enable continuous feedback loops.
Feedback is the bedrock of customer experience management. To be truly customer obsessed, businesses must establish mechanisms and processes to collect insights from consumers at every touch point. These can include surveys, reviews, direct interactions — basically anything that synthesizes and gathers information. By analyzing these insights for root causes and customer sentiment, organizations can not only resolve issues more promptly, but optimize decision-making based on how those resolutions are received.
Prioritize data-driven decision making.
They say data is the oil of the 21st century, so why not use it to fuel your business’ tenets for customer obsession? Because customer experience is so closely connected to bottom-line performance, any CX decision you make should be based on high-quality data.
One of the best ways to collect customer analytics is through a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform. CCaaS tools automatically synthesize cross-channel insights, allowing agents to take real-time actions to improve customer satisfaction.
Personalize the customer journey.
Behind every consumer is an individual. Knowing this, customer-obsessed businesses aim to personalize CX by leveraging analytics. They use data to customize interactions, recommendations and more, thereby adding a personal touch to every interaction.
CCaaS tools are great in this regard, as they can help you gather data as customers move along their buyer’s journey. This allows you to map their progress through every interaction, ensuring a seamless experience across each channel.
Start Improving CX Today
Let’s recap what we’ve learned:
- Customer-obsessed enterprises are laser-focused on improving CX at all touch points.
- Customer obsession is an organizational commitment (it takes dedication from everyone!), but one that reaps big-time rewards.
- There are plenty of ways to foster a customer-first ethos across your company.
Ultimately, embracing a customer-obsessed mindset isn’t just a strategic choice: It’s a transformative journey that can unlock a host of long-term benefits for you and your customers alike.
Robyn Rawlings is Director of Campaigns and Content Marketing at Webex by Cisco. She is a successful marketing leader with over 20 years of experience in enterprise software and software-as-a-service (SaaS). Rawlings is currently Director of Integrated Campaigns and Content Marketing at Webex by Cisco, a leader in cloud calling, collaboration, and customer experience solutions. Previous to Cisco, Rawlings held leadership positions at CA Technologies and various small startups where she drove programs in digital marketing, thought leadership, corporate marketing, product marketing and customer advocacy.
