Every business works and grows based on the ideas it has been built on. Whether it is about selling products or services, the fundamental idea when kept intact leads to unprecedented business growth. However, if there is anything that lies at the core of every business, it is the customers. Unlike trending buzzwords that quickly turn cold, ‘customer centricity’ has gone up from hot to hotter.
Customer centricity is not anything new but it has been increasingly used in the scope of digital transformation of businesses these days. Amidst the chaos, the global spending on digital transformation is projected to reach US$ 1.8 trillion, thus placing customer centricity at the forefront. Still, many individuals talk about ‘businesses becoming customer-centric’ without knowing what it means.
Let us help you clear your way through the prevailing jargon and understand more about customer centricity.
What is customer centricity?
Customer centricity can be defined as the organizational mindset that places the customers at the epicenter of the business instead of sales or product. Gartner defines it as people’s ability to understand the perception, situations, and expectations of their customers. In simpler words, being consumer-centric requires you to keep your customers at the focal point of all your business decisions.
Being customer-centric is all about truly understanding your customers to anticipate their needs, wants, and communication preferences. It is about creating meaningful experiences and building long-lasting relationships with them.
To build a customer-centric organization, you need to take steps to be in your customers’ shoes and act accordingly. You need to take into account how each business decision and process affect the ultimate experience.
Why is customer centricity important for your business?
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates
As one of the most popular customer centricity quotes, it speaks volumes about the need to focus on your customers. If your customers are not happy with what you sell and how you sell it, they won’t buy from you. Ultimately, you don’t have a business if you do not have happy customers.
Think about your own experiences with some of your favorite brands. The primary reason why you choose them over the others is that they have made it easy for you to do business with them. They communicate with you via your preferred channels, allow you to pay using the payment method of your choice, and even present offers/discounts that you earnestly look forward to.
Customers, these days, have an easy path to stop buying from brands they love. As per a PWC report, one out of three customers choose to leave a brand they love after a single bad experience.
Every stage of the customer journey with your brand, be it awareness, purchase, or advocacy, will benefit from customer centricity. The ultimate reward of establishing customer-centric processes is retention and loyalty.
3 common challenges related to the customer-centric approach
Building a customer-centric culture
Being the least tangible, this challenge is the most difficult one to address. It is because culture does not change easily and cannot be forced. Therefore, it requires every member of your workforce to embrace the positive side of customer centricity and put the customers first in their decision-making.
Switching from product-centric to customer-centric approach
Shifting from product- to customer-centricity requires building processes that are focused on customers over product. Consider digital payments as an example. In the absence of UPI or digital wallets, you had to interact with multiple bank representatives for withdrawal and fund transfer requests. Banking experiences were siloed, leading to poor customer experiences.
On the other hand, the current scenario of digital payments has grown manifold because of its customer-centric nature.
Stepping beyond technology and data silos
The frequency of interactions with your brand has increased with the growing digital channels, including chatbots, social media, product review sites, etc. To understand your customers, you need not consider technology and data as detractions but enablers. In fact, they hold the key to understanding your customers.
Best practices to overcome the barriers related to customer centricity
- Incorporate customer centricity into your company’s mission and vision to build the right culture
- Capture customers’ feedback to understand their behavior
- Plan for the longer term
- Use the right technology to utilize consumer-centric data
Where does payment experience stand in correlation to customer centricity for startups?
In the global picture, India is one of the fastest-growing startup ecosystems. Our startup landscape has witnessed tremendous opportunities being seized by innovative startups. As per statistics, India is the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world and has 50,000 startups as recognized by DPIIT.
The following four aspects are considered important levers for startup growth:
- Achieving the right product market-fit
- Hiring the right talent
- Marketing and promotional offers
- Payment experience
While product-market fit is highly considered to plan for growth, payments are not amongst the top priority for many startups. Surprisingly, some of the core hindrances for startups growth:
- Abandoned carts
- Converting COD orders to prepaid orders
- Improving transaction success rates
Recommended Read: What is Transaction Success Rate and Why It Really Matters?
Hence, it would be fair to conclude that streamlining the payment process for startups is a key level for growth. If you run a startup or have plans to do so, you need to consider a customer-centric approach towards the payment experience. This is possible by:
- Enabling the customers to pay you online via their preferred payment method
- Reducing friction at checkout
- Enabling secure and successful payment transactions to build trust amongst customers
Ensure customer-centric payments with Paytm Payment Gateway
Integrating a suitable payment solution is a fundamental requirement to running a successful startup. With Paytm Payment Gateway, you can rest assured that customers will always be at the center of your business.
Paytm Payment Gateway is known amongst the startup community in India for:
- Seamless checkout experience
- 250 mn+ saved cards, 150 mn+ UPI handles, and 100 mn+ bank accounts
- 330 mn+ Paytm Wallet users
- 99.9% payment gateway uptime
- Paytm Postpaid – our flagship Buy Now Pay Later solution
- Easy Subscription facility to accept recurring payments
- Easy integration and instant activation
- Next day settlements with no holidays
- Special value proposition for startups*
