2. 2
WISDOM TALK
To create customer success, an evolution of
customer centric culture is required, first to be
established and then consistently get measured.
Let’s look at the 80/20 rule (the Pareto Princi-
ple), 80% of business comes from 20% of your
existing and consistent customers – if I describe
it more, a small portion of your customers ac-
tually generates the major chunk of your sales
revenue. Now that’s the implication of customer
loyalty. That’s why acknowledging and respect-
ing these 20% valued customers is vital. After
all, loyal customers are the biggest assets of any
business, globally and nationally!
In fact, customer loyalty is an after product of
a customer focus & centricity culture. The key
determinant of a brand’s success. Yet many
companies still keep focusing more on seasonal
sales and spending funds on putting bill boards
at prime locations with “SALE up to 50% or
70% Off” Getting new customers is important,
but are these companies actually working to
bring them and then give them a great shopping
experience and keeping them coming back on a
regular basis?
HOW TO BE THE
MOST SUCCESFULL
CUSTOMER CENTRIC
COMPANY!
3. 3
A great service is the most emotionally per-
ceived factor for a customer. Now in Pakistan
as well, customer looks for acknowledgements
and a fine purchase assistance. They like to be
valued. Though this was not a culture 10 years
back but now more awareness and wide prod-
uct choices has raised the standards of customer
expectations as well as customer services stand-
ards in Pakistan.
Now a days, it’s important to seek the customer
preferences in your industry on regular basis
and then creating a framework or process which
meet their expectations in a nicer way. A per-
sonalized shopping experience with resolution
of issues and problems quickly leads to the cus-
tomer advocacy for your company. Remember
customer advocacy is the most genuine way of
increasing customer database and referrals.
Front end business to customers B2C must
have a customer advisory platform associated
with them. As customer advisory groups or ad-
vocate communities share feedback, it’s impor-
tant to actually listen, use it and then tell them
how it was used.
Activating your brand advocates can be a de-
lightful way to increase marketing reach and
grow your business. Great companies are
founded on an insightful knowledge of their
customer’s preferences and they actually invest
a reasonable budget on their customer service
rather than placing everything for advertising
which has rather a short term impact.
A Great Customer Focused
Organization Looks At:
As a customer centricity specialist, let me share
few of the important strategies which should be
a part of every brand’s daily life, if they want to
excel in the current competitive market:
Customer feedback is the key to your
Success:
There really is no substitute for asking cus-
tomers what they think. Our brand teams are
doing very creative work these days and that is
admirable but are you really listening to your
customers? After all they are the ones who
drive revenues for your companies. There are
many ways you can do it: via the web, on your
website, after calls into your contact center, via
email or even face-to-face. You can even set up
polls through social media. One great interface I
can suggest is electronic feedback interface “the
feedback experience” by Static-A, which collects
and deliver your customer feedback in a very
philosophical and unbiased approach.
Customer Advisory Board/Specialist:
A Customer Advisory Board is a “representa-
tive group of customers and or set a customer
experience specialist that meets periodically
to offer advice on the customer centricity plan
and company direction”. It was old days when
company ran without them but now it’s a need
of the moment if you want to stay competitive
and add value to your brand life. Focus groups
are another great example to work on these
areas.
Web monitoring:
How much valuable information slips through
the fingers each day of companies that don’t
monitor their web page analytics? Doing so
would allow them to gather information on
things like where customers were referred from,
on which page of the site customers left, what
percentage of customers left the site after only
viewing one page (the bounce rate), how long
they spent on each page of the website, what
path they took through the website, and what
percentage of customers who viewed a product’s
features actually went on to buy it on the site
(funnel analysis).
Social listening:
The most used channel of this decade. Every
day, somewhere in the world, it’s very likely
that someone is talking about your company at
social media. More and more, these conversa-
tions are happening online either through social
networks or online forums. The companies can
use social analytics to learn the expectation of
their customers coming through the social me-
dia channels and how to image the brands ef-
fectively through service them.
Voice of Front Line Employees: Frontline
employees deal with your customers every day.
Tap into their knowledge (and engage them in
the process) by asking them about your custom-
ers. I guarantee you will get responses you did
not expect and it may help you dramatically!
4. The success is core related to achieving custom-
er loyalty, positive word of- Mouth and, ulti-
mately, profitable growth. The experience needs
to deliver on your Brand’s promise, and you
need to understand where you are succeeding
- and failing - So you can create selling experi-
ences that keep your customers coming back to
your company.
Three Stages To Achieve Loyal
Customers!
In this lovely info graphic by Static-A, we
see the 2016 one point strategy for brands/
banks to win loyal customers. Our info graphic
basically differs between 3 sorts of customer
experiences at your branches – the Random
one, the Predictable one and the Branded one.
The Random one is the worst experience
with inconsistent and unintentional experiences
at your sales channels– your customers most
likely won’t come back.
The Predictable one is a bit better – your
customer is consistent, they enter your stores in-
tentionally. Still, they don’t feel valued enough
neither felt you differentiated then usual. This
is what happen to most of the Pakistani brand
stores here. Trust me, this includes big brand
names!
When you’re “Branded”, that’s when you
get loyal customers. That is when they come –
they know they won’t find, what you offer in
other places…Remember: What you offer is not
only the product in your showcase, it’s the pack-
age of elements they come for!
Hence it’s a detailed strategy and entirely a sep-
arate topic, to know more how you can convert
your random and predictable customers into
your branded ones, you can write to me.
The Impact Of Customer Services
On Consumer Buying Behaviors
Through a recent survey conducted by Static-A
which is Pakistan’s finest Customer centricity
advising platform, the survey was conducted
among the potential customers in between the
age group of 18 to 65+.
This was observed that 95% of the people has
recommended a business to their family and
friends, after a positive experience and the 87%
discouraged a business after having negative ex-
perience at any touch point. Hence this is very
important to learn the experience insights from
your customers to know what they are going
through emotionally at our sales points. Net
promoter score is an ideal metrics to measure
that trend and by running NPS system across
your organization can give you a great insight,
how to run things perfectly!
Many companies are searching for and invent-
ing new ways and tools for boosting customer
engagement. My way is do everything simply.
Simplicity is the key to greater performance and
greater results.
If you look at how your business is organ-
ized and functioning at the moment, you will
observe there are so many things that can be
done better with whatever resources you already
have, without bringing in new tools and new
people. You can do this simply by optimizing
your current procedures.
If your customers know it’s super easy to get
support from your company, they will no doubt
expand their business with you and spread the
good word, which will lead to more clients and
greater engagement.
There is nothing worst then a business without
a customer service model or with a bad custom-
er service trait. Still in Pakistan, many mindsets
still do not take t a serious business and that is
the reason, most of the business do not survive
on long term. Some of the major problems I
have noticed in companies business models are:
Relying heavily on Sales figure Metrics:
Numbers in business matters a lot, they tell you
accurate measurements about how the process
is functioning and provide base for you to sug-
gest you need improvements but when organi-
zations focus only on daily sale figures. Trust,
it will lead you to nothing but gradually a de-
cline, no matter how big company you are. We
have seen huge names came in Pakistani brand
market. They came, conquered but fall after they
reached high on their growth curve and now we
don’t see them around. I can name many!
Not Optimizing Channels efficiently:
The aim of Omni channel service is to provide
customers with options for how they would like
to communicate with a brand if they have a
query or a complaint to make. It is about pro-
viding a seamless experience to the customer,
regardless of the channel they choose to use but
many companies haven’t fully grasped the im-
plications. Multi-channel also offers the benefits
of providing personalized service to individual
customers more efficiently. It’s important to
be where the customer is, whether that’s chat,
email, social media, etc.
WISDOM TALK
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5. Considering Customer Service &
Research as a “Cost Center”:
In Pakistan even now at modern age, Customer
service departments are mostly considered as
a liability, people usually consider them as a
“Cost Center” that is increasing expenses with-
out adding any revenue. Only few of us have
understood the importance of maximizing every
opportunity to interact with customers. Imagine
your all sales men handling the visitors well,
they make them delighted, advise well, sell
and make them feel important to come again;
do you know how many opportunities can be
generated out of it? You do not need to even
advertise if your team deliver that level. But it
cannot happen so simply, you need to regularly
invest in customer experience measurements
and insights and then these handsome sales
figures will be a by-product to that investment!
3 Socket Customer Centric Ap-
proach
With the support of this info graphic designed
by Static-A research team, I would like to share
3 point model for you to put into daily busi-
ness practice and you will see amazing changes
in your revenues and goodwill. Though there
should be a genuine, consistent ad a long term
effort required to win the trust of your custom-
ers. But once it’s achieved, you don’t need to
spend high on advertisements or get desperate
with your sales people:
Now you may have realized the power of cus-
tomer services and realized where you are
positioning your companies. As I say to most
of the CEO’s and executive management that
customer services is not a department, it’s an
attitude, a mindset and a culture which takes
a simple organization to the heights of unbe-
lievable success. It’s not a short term route but
requires a scientific approach designed by cus-
tomer services/experience passionate people at
your organizations and requires constant efforts
and devotion but the Return of investment and
the pay-back benefits are enormous.
Ali M. Malik is a Business
Performance/Customer Experience
Enabler (CX Man) for the leading
brands in Pakistan and the contributor/
writer of this article. He can be
contacted at ali@static-a.com for a
professional consultation.
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