We work across 18 different industry sectors. And so it’s no surprise that we have a lot of manufacturing clients who come to us looking for help in managing their customer relationships.
Helping these kinds of organisations – particularly mid to large-sized multinational manufacturers with operationally complex business-to-business relationships – is our bread and butter. And we see first-hand how important it is for them to improve the experience they give their customers.
The growing importance of customer experience
That word – ‘experience’ – is becoming increasingly important, right across the broad spectrum of business sectors. And this is particularly true for manufacturers, who are increasingly making ‘customer experience’ a top priority. Just how many are doing this has been made very clear in some great research published recently in The Manufacturer.
The top line is that customer experience is now the number one priority for many manufacturers. More and more, manufacturers are realising that building a customer-centric business is key to their success.
A new driver for loyalty
Times have certainly changed. Convenience has rapidly overtaken technology as the primary driver of customer loyalty. Today, customers raised on the hyper-convenience of Amazon and Uber expect that level of seamless customer experience wherever they do business.
The result? Well, according to The Manufacturer’s research, three-quarters of manufacturers will soon adopt a customer-centric business model.
That’s a trend that certainly chimes with us, and reflects our experience of dealing with our manufacturing clients. Creating a customer-centric business begins with an effective customer feedback programme – which is where we come in.
Building a customer-centric culture
It’s clear that for a manufacturer to simply say they put customers first isn’t enough. They need to genuinely and fundamentally reshape the way they do business to make it real.
To do this, our insight is that companies need to do much more than just meet fundamental needs. Amazon don’t just deliver goods quickly. Uber don’t just take you where you need to go.
Instead, they make the whole experience simple, from ordering to delivery to returning an item. If you need to return an Amazon parcel, all of the information you need as a customer is easily accessible online, making the experience as seamless as possible. Tech is a big part of this, of course, but only in the sense that it is always in the service, ultimately, of the customer.
We’ve spoken before here about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a useful model when it comes to talking about improving customer relationships. You can read more about it here.
The idea is that as you move up that hierarchy, building trust between your business and its customers, your entire organisation becomes more customer-centric. Loyalty increases. But fundamental to achieving this is getting an accurate sense of what is most important to your customers in the first place.
Understanding what improves the customer experience
Our customer feedback programme, The Referral Rating, helps you to do this. It’s simplicity allows your customers to set the agenda, and talk about what matters to them.
For our many manufacturing clients, that might be operational concerns, such as delivery performance and product quality. And these need to be acted upon, of course.
But our programme also helps you to dig deeper – to find those issues that open up opportunities for your entire organisation, from top to bottom, to build stronger, more strategic relationship with your customers. We call these ‘pivotal truths’.
For manufacturers, that kind of insight is gold dust. Of course, our programme may well help you to find new ways to improve your customer processes, to find out where you’re falling down, and to do the basics right.
But it will also provide you with the ‘pivotal truths’ that have the potential to completely transform the quality of your customer relationships at every level of the business.
Put improving those key relationships at the heart of your ongoing strategy, backed with our insights that allow you to act with confidence, and you’ll soon be building a genuinely customer-centric culture.
If you’re a manufacturer and you’d like to find out more about how we can improve your customer relationships, we’d love to hear from you. Call us today on 01753 201341 or email us to discuss your needs.
