Many businesses have trouble seeing beyond their own internal issues and processes. It is essential that companies maintain a customer-centered approach to business and strive to minimize their own issues to better serve their clients, before they find someone else who will.
Organizations and CPA firms must focus on customers and clients, even amid other internal challenges and opportunities.
You can post your mission statement and company values as many times as you want, but until these actions are implemented within your organization, your customers won’t feel the effects of your efforts.
So, here are our top four tips to adopt a customer-centric approach to business:
- Change your attitude towards your customers
- Implement your value proposition
- Look outside your industry for new ideas
- Engage your customers in new ways
Becoming customer-centric is a huge change to your business culture and operations, if you don’t currently take any steps towards this approach. But don’t worry, we’re covering it all below.
Change your attitude towards your customers
The easiest way to change how you look at your customers and how you perceive their needs is to create and employ simple surveys or by speaking with your customers directly.
You will still need to sell your customers on your existing services or new services that could be beneficial to them, but explaining the value your firm provides should be your number one priority.
Observing where your customers are going instead of your firm is also a great way to understand competitive differences. A client may not tell you why they chose a competitor over you, but if you know which competitor, you can figure it out from there.
Implement your value proposition
We noted earlier that you shouldn’t just be sharing your mission statement and considering that to be a customer-centric approach. This is why you need a value proposition.
Your value proposition is a statement of the benefit your company will deliver to a customer. Show them why they should choose you over a competitor. It’s sometimes difficult for accounting firms to describe this type of value, but by explaining that your firm is here to make the numbers clear for your clients is a good start.
Look outside your industry for new ideas
Check out other industries that are great at providing customer-centric experiences. For example, a lot of accounting is trust-based because your clients may not understand the numbers themselves.
Examining other trust-based industries could be a good start here. Looking to how those in the medical field, pilots, or mechanics create trust and deliver on their promises would be a good exercise.
For example, a mechanic will take your broken car, perform diagnostics, explain to you the issues and the options, and then proceed with the solution.
Engage your customers in new ways
You will need to establish your new customer-centric approach to operations across your organization. Some of your staff may be resistant, if they have not held customer-centric roles in the past. This will definitely be a hurdle for your CPA firm, but they will need to get on board to remain competitive.
You may need to outline the next steps or new approach to dealing with client requests and new accounts… some hand-holding will be required but ultimately, implementing this approach can drastically improve your business.
Of course, it is possible to take the customer-centric approach too far. Some companies expand their services too broadly, causing their core strengths to start lacking. It’s important to remember that taking this strategy to the extreme is just as dangerous as not implementing it at all.
Focus on your core competencies and implement steps to your customer-centric approach slowly. This will create and establish a sense of loyalty amongst your current client base, and may even prompt them to refer their contacts to enjoy your excellent new experience.
No time to implement these changes yourself? Join us on Dryrun to be connected with an approved partner.
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