There’s plenty of data to back up the importance of being customer centric. According to VisionCritical, customer experience will overtake price and product quality as the key brand differentiator by the year 2020. More than 60 percent of CEOs have said that rallying their organizations around the customer is among their top three priorities, and 90 percent said they are strengthening their customer and client engagement programs.
The problem? Less than half of organizations feel confident in their levels of customer centricity.
There are plenty of resources available for teaching organizations how to be more customer centric, and psychology is able to explain why customer centricity works. So why aren’t we taking customer-centric approaches as seriously as we should? One theory is that modern management hasn’t seen enough data to prove its value. Well, business leaders, challenge accepted. Here are 15 statistics that demonstrate the importance of being customer centric.
Why Being Customer Centric Matters
1. 78 percent of consumers have bailed on a transaction or not made an intended purchase because of a poor service experience. (Source: American Express)
2. 52 percent of customers say that good customer service experience has led them to purchase more from a company. (Source: Zendesk)
3. 50 percent of customers will use a business more frequently after a positive customer experience. (Source: NewVoiceMedia)
4. 70 percent of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated. (Source: VisionCritical)
5. 86 percent of consumers will pay up to 25 percent more for a better customer experience. (Source: RightNow Technologies)
6. 52 percent of consumers have switched providers in the past year due to poor customer service. (Source: Accenture)
7. 24 percent of customers will continue to seek out a vendor for two or more years after good experiences. (Source: Zendesk)
8. 77 percent of consumers are likely to recommend a product or service after an excellent customer experience. (Source: Customer Experience Matters)
9. 82 percent of customers said they stopped doing business with a company due to a poor customer experience. (Source: TechCrunch)
10. 69 percent of customers will recommend a company after a positive customer experience. (Source: NewVoiceMedia)
11. Companies that are customer centric are 60 percent more profitable. (Source: VentureBeat)
12. In the United States, the estimated cost of customers switching due to poor service is $1.6 trillion. (Source: Accenture)
13. Increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent could increase profits from 25 percent to 95 percent. (Source: Harvard Business Review)
14. More than half of B2B companies will avoid a vendor for 2+ years after a bad customer experience. (Source: Zendesk)
15. 89 percent of respondents who had recently switched from a business to its competitor did so because of poor service. (Source: BizJournal)
To summarize: Customer centricity attracts more customers who will stay longer, refer other customers and purchase more from your company. And the consequences of not being customer centric can be detrimental to your bottom line.
So what can business owners do? Start by looking for signs that you don’t have a customer-centric business model. Then access our on-demand webinar, which will share actionable tips for being customer centric to drive faster business growth:
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