Even in the best of times, leading a business is no easy task. Unfortunately, with COVID-19 wreaking havoc on global markets (not to mention people’s lives), this task is becoming even more challenging. Every industry is being hit, and it’s impossible to say how long it will take to fully recover.

In situations like these, most leaders instinctively look internally, and closely examine their people, products, and services. It’s easy to spend all of your time calculating base, best, and worst-case business disruption scenarios and their impact on important KPIs. These are critically important, but to ensure your business can survive tough times, it is more important than ever to be looking outside your company, and doubling down on the value of a customer-centric culture.

I’ve been working in and around the asset management industry for more than two decades, and I currently serve as CEO of Imagineer Technology Group, a marketing and investor relations software service provider. In an industry like ours, we are focused on owning our relationships with our clients forever—as long as they are in business we want them to be a client. That’s not just because we like them; it is far more economically efficient for us to retain existing client relationships than to put all of our efforts into constantly searching for new ones. I’d be willing to bet the same is also true for your business.

To that end, I have found that the best way to retain and grow our relationships is by being relentlessly customer-centric. That means focusing on the deep-seated needs of each customer over our wants as a business. I believe that the most important thing you can do in business is to develop mutual respect between your customer (or prospect) and your company by being customer-centric.

There are a number of ways to inspire a customer-centric culture within your business — for us at Imagineer, it all flows from constantly focusing on our core values of openness to see the world from the client’s perspective; gratitude to show the client they are valued; pragmatism to find the right solution; and integrity to do the right thing. But what specifically can you do with customers to show them how much they are valued?

The following are four ways to show your commitment to customer-centricity in both good and bad times:

Strike A Balance Between Live And Self-Support
We’ve all grown accustomed to self-support, even if we don’t always love it. As businesses, we invest boat-loads of dollars in tools like FAQs, forums, knowledge books, and support videos in order to ensure our customers can get the information they need as efficiently — and cost-effectively — as possible. This is a great starting point, but isn’t enough.

Companies must find a balance between live and self-support. Why? For starters, in many cases it is simply easier for the company and the customer to handle an issue person-to-person. More importantly, there are also times when speaking with your customers directly may be the only way to retain them.

Think of it this way: the minute your customer becomes desperate enough to pick up the phone to talk or to engage in live chat at their keyboard, they’ve already reached a breaking point of sorts. They’ve wasted their precious time and have had a less-than-wonderful experience with your company.

According to a North American Technographics Customer Experience Online Survey published by Forrester a few years ago, 71% of consumers agree that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide good customer service. By being available and empathetic at times like these, teams can shine and ultimately win back a measure of the trust that was lost.

Close The Feedback Loop
Every interaction with your customer is a chance to learn something valuable about them and to show them you appreciate the partnership. They can teach you about their needs, your industry, your competitors, and most importantly, the true value they get from your products. Take advantage of what they have to say and bring them into the loop on your plans. Because we value openness at Imagineer, in our case that means transparently sharing our road map and talking as frankly about the features we won’t build as those we can’t wait to deliver.

Making your customers feel like insiders heightens their sense of importance and belonging to your mission. It’s also a great way to turn them into advocates for your product and your company, and who doesn’t want more evangelists?

Once you’re sharing your plans with, and collecting feedback from, your customers, you need to make sure to close the loop. Follow up with them when their feedback makes it into your products or processes.

Maintain Consistent Communication And Service
One of the most aggravating experiences for customers is receiving conflicting messages in different interactions with a company. This often occurs because the proper standards for customer communication either don’t exist or aren’t being followed. The only thing worse than this for customer relationships is when staff aren’t experienced or trained well enough to handle issues in the first place. An example of this that comes to mind happened to me a couple of years ago. We had a teammate who loved making clients happy. So much, in fact, that on a number of occasions, they made promises we wouldn’t normally make and then failed to bring those promises to the attention of their teammates. Definitely not our finest hour.

Continuously training your teams on your products and procedures can help with this. So can teaching them how to set and manage customer expectations (but that’s a piece for another time). Your services teams relish opportunities to solve problems for your customers but you don’t want them feeling the need to improvise at every turn.

Keep The 5 Ps Front And Center
The 5 Ps model teaches the importance of implementing policies that support a company’s premise, products, processes, and people. Your business can’t thrive unless it attracts and retains customers. This model reminds us that the premise behind a company and the products it makes act as attractors, but aren’t enough to capture long-term value by themselves. To do that, a company needs powerful retainers – repeatable processes and well-trained people to drive performance. Achieving a healthy balance of the 5 Ps can mean the difference between ho-hum and exceptional customer relationships.

As with any relationship, demonstrating your ongoing commitment to making your customers successful takes continuous effort, but the hard work is worth it. At the end of the day, your customers are your most important asset, and are ultimately what keep you in business. As a leader, it is your duty to make sure they know how important they are. 

Jeremie Bacon is CEO of Imagineer Technology Group.