Understanding Customer Centricity in eCommerce

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY?

According to consulting group Gartner, customer centricity is “the ability of people in an organisation to understand customers' situations, perceptions, and expectations”. Note, importantly about their perceptions and expectations. 

To understand these you need to first understand their motivations. This is how we become a part of their journey. Without knowing the motivation, how can we support them? This is where customer personas are incredibly valuable. We talk a little more about personas and going beyond the basics in our blog, personas: why you should get personal with your digital strategy.

5 STEPS TO CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

We have broken down the journey into 5 key areas, that if they are not already part of your marketing strategy, should be welcomed with open arms and become your daily routine. Being tasked with improving customer centricity can be overwhelming for any size business, but these areas can be the perfect starting point. 

#1 ESTABLISH REGULAR FEEDBACK LOOPS

A great start to any business wanting to better understand their customer is setting up regular, key part, regular - feedback sessions. This can be done in several different ways - but focusing on the teams who are directly dealing with the customer should be the priority. We also know, that not all customers will be giving us verbal feedback. Having multiple opportunities for feedback will allow a continuous flow of that insight. If this doesn’t become part of the regular expectations, then opportunities can be missed. 

• Website surveys - add surveys to your website to understand user issues. Click to chat questions and comments - if your customers regularly ask the same questions, you know what you can improve.
• Internal feedback from customer-facing staff - meet your teams (from the tills, through to call centre teams and especially anyone managing your socials) each month; believe me, they know problems that your customers are facing that you’ve never heard about.
• Email - if you have a general Contact Us form - get added to that email and set a redirect up in your inbox so you can go in and review. These channels could potentially offer up common themes for your customers that you hadn’t realised, pain points that customers didn’t feel worthy of calling, but enough to vent their frustrations. And also, whether or not you as a business are getting back to your customers. 

In my experience, if you have a contact number on the site, every now and again it is worth calling up and going through the process that you expect from your customers. Understand how that goes and see how your customer teams do. You may find things that surprise you.  

#2 INTERVIEW CUSTOMERS AND POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS

Now this may feel like a big task to take on. But when there is a huge dependency on the data, we can become too obsessed with quantitative data over qualitative. We always want to ensure the changes we make are measurable, but there is still a place for face-to-face conversations. 

Our Behavioural team have supported our clients by establishing focus groups so that they can better understand their customer journey. 

Dr Kiran Webster explains, “Focus groups are a gold mine of information! They allow you to dig deeper into things you already know or have a hunch about. Plus, the group format allows for participants to bounce off of each other and produce deeper insights than one person alone might”. 

Even when you have the data, sometimes you need that customer to explain their version of things, this a fantastic opportunity to find out those motivations and customer habits.

When you have these results, you have your data. This can then be used to guide those internal conversations too and gives your ideas more backing when it comes to implementing change. 

#3 OMNICHANNEL TOUCH POINTS

Have you considered all the customer touch points of where a customer may reach you? It may be that in some cases channels were set up and not completely nurtured or have been taken for granted. But knowing the areas in which your customers are first interacting with you, either online or offline, and ensuring they’re linked up will give a far greater customer journey. Be sure to have regular interactions if other teams manage any of these touchpoints. Have a consistent tone of voice and messaging, this will provide your customer with that instant recognition of your brand, whilst also building up your trust and providing a community feel. 

#4 STAY ON TOP OF YOUR COMPETITORS

Never lose sight of the fact that even your most loyal customers interact with your competitors from time to time. Make sure you’re aware of what they are doing, from new products, and offers to online messaging, so that you can respond in kind. 

New customers, in particular, will visit your website, your showrooms and stores as well as others to make an informed decision - particularly if you offer larger, more expensive products such as furniture. Google calls this the “messy middle”, and it’s important to understand where you stand in the market.

Always be mindful, that it can be easy to follow your competitors on socials and become distracted from your own path. Having an interest in what others are doing can be great for inspiration, but what might work for them may not work for you. Try and remain original and authentic with your approach. And something I always recommend is, to only set up the channels you know your audience is interacting with. Depending on your size and team resources, this can be a huge undertaking to manage, ensure you have time to do this in the right way whilst also keeping on top of the engagement it's receiving. 

#5 TEST, TEST, THEN TEST AGAIN

Once you have some of the previous points in action, a simple way to get you closer to the customer is to have a comprehensive, strategic testing roadmap. In the digital world, you can test almost everything, from messaging to user experience (UX) and design. You’ll likely now have several hypotheses in place that you believe can improve eCommerce performance and conversion but don’t make the mistake of putting this into practice without testing first. 

Make sure that you understand which changes to your website improve your eCommerce conversion rate, a roadmap will help you set out enough time for the test to run and see the impact. And if your test ‘isn’t successful’ it's also not a failure, this is why testing is important. Now that you have the data and understanding, should a suggestion be made from elsewhere in the business for a similar change you can back your reasoning with facts.

Simply put, testing allows you to very quickly see if your marketing decisions are helping your customers to convert, or not. And that means you can quickly put things right.

DON’T LET PERFECT BE THE ENEMY OF GOOD

If at the end of this, you’re thinking there's a lot of work to be done to achieve true customer-centricity. That’s because you’re right, there is! But remember, not everything needs to be done at once. Reiterating this to senior leaders within the business may also help towards buy-in and have this become more of a habit - rather than a one-off. You need to know your customers best, which could be a huge help towards circulating it around the business and getting everyone on the same page. 

The realities of your day-to-day mean that undertaking a single big project may be difficult - but that doesn’t mean you can’t take it step by step. Our key takeaway here would be, that if you’re not already - establish those feedback loops and be involved in the contact comms. You could start with a meeting every month or so and take action from there. The idea of interviewing your customers may feel overwhelming and take time, but break it down to make it more achievable, once you’re there, the insight will take you a long way. 

Alternatively, look to outsource. 

At Reflect Digital, we undertake projects like these regularly and see great results in not only helping our clients to get closer to customer-centricity but also what actions they should take off the back of it; from messaging through to email and website journeys. If you want some advice, we’d love to hear from you!