{"id":1184,"date":"2022-04-26T19:46:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/?p=1184"},"modified":"2023-06-15T01:58:09","modified_gmt":"2023-06-15T01:58:09","slug":"customer-centricity-more-than-tagline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/ap\/blog\/customer-centricity-more-than-tagline\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do We Make Customer Centricity More Than a Tagline?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A little while back, I had a conversation<\/a> with best-selling author and digital anthropologist, Brian Solis. He\u2019s also Salesforce’s Global Innovation Evangelist. The main focus of our conversation was customer centricity, which is a phrase we hear a lot these days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian sometimes describes himself as a futurist \u2014 another word we hear a lot. I\u2019ll let Brian describe exactly what that means to him: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDigital anthropology lets us understand how technology impacts communities. If you want to deliver better customer service for a digital-first brain, you need to understand what it is that they value, and what they expect. It helps to humanise the business, giving technology a sense of greater purpose. We\u2019re going full steam ahead on digital, and we tend to make it transactional. We miss that warmth, and technology\u2019s power to develop more meaningful relationships. The role of a futurist is to translate those trends. We ask what the next few years are going to look like, so that we can start to plan ahead rather than react to the next disruption.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really enjoyed my conversation with Brian. Here are my takeaways, including how we can make customer centricity more than just a tagline:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does customer centricity really mean?<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As Brian said in our conversation, you could ask any executive from any company in any industry whether their organisation is customer centric, and they would say yes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That presents us with a challenge: how can we define customer centricity? Many organisations use it as a philosophy, but perhaps don\u2019t have the tools to turn that into practical activity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, being customer centric comes down to whether or not your operations, decision-making, and planning are all based on the information you have about your customers. That data has to be accessible to everyone. If you don\u2019t have a single source of truth<\/a> about your customers, it is very difficult to be truly customer centric. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian told me about some research that we\u2019ve conducted recently. It found that only 13% of businesses around the world<\/a> have a single view of their customers and can act in real time based on that data. That means we still have a long way to go before every company is truly customer centric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gift of customer service<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Customer service teams have the opportunity to drive the move to total customer centricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It could be said that customer service is often a weak link in the customer journey. You don\u2019t often hear customers telling stories of being excited to contact customer service, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201c<\/span>Service means to serve, to help, to advise. If you think about it, it’s a gift.\u201d<\/p>\nBrian Solis<\/cite><\/blockquote>\nGlobal Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce<\/span>\n