Customer-centric businesses prioritize the customer experience—often even over traditional success metrics. They orient their operations around customers by regularly collecting feedback through surveys, reviews, and direct communication. These businesses then use this information to improve products, services, and processes. Some of these improvements might include personalized product recommendations or customized communication. This type of business model, if done right, can create a loyal customer base and support long-term growth.
What does it mean to be customer-oriented?
Customer-oriented, or customer service–oriented, businesses put consumer needs ahead of their own. This business strategy goes beyond providing exceptional customer service. Consumer-centric companies prioritize customer experience, even if it complicates their operations. They invest time and effort into understanding consumer needs and let these needs guide their decision-making at every level.
Customer-oriented companies understand the importance of keeping customers happy: Satisfied patrons are more likely to leave positive reviews, which can attract more customers and lead to revenue growth. A customer-oriented strategy can also clarify internal operations; establishing a clear set of priorities can ensure the entire company is working toward the same goal.
How to make your business more customer-oriented
- Research your user base
- Listen to feedback
- Prioritize customer service
- Train employees
- Consider user experience
- Practice transparency
A customer-oriented approach can give your business a competitive edge by providing a positive and unparalleled customer experience in your market. This supports customer retention, which supports business growth. Try these tactics to start building a customer-centric culture:
Research your user base
A strong understanding of your customer base will help your team make customer-centric decisions. Primary and secondary market research can reveal valuable consumer insights. For example, primary research efforts like conducting customer surveys and collecting reports from customer service teams provide insights into the current user experience, which could help your business identify weaknesses and look for opportunities to improve. Additionally, secondary research strategies like third-party data analysis can reveal broader market trends and help your business identify unmet consumer needs.
Listen to feedback
Listening to customer feedback is an essential element of building a customer-oriented business.Online reviews and customer support conversations can provide insight into how customers feel about your company. Responding to reviews demonstrates you value your customers’ opinions. Meanwhile, incorporating this valuable feedback into your product development process can help create a more user-friendly experience. For example, you might create product video tutorials after fielding requests from customers for more how-to content.
Consider sharing customers’ feedback across your organization to promote customer-focused thinking. Reading reviews in meetings or inviting a member of the customer service department to share insights will help ensure the entire organization understands the customer experience.
Prioritize customer service
Providing high-quality customer support is essential for customer-centric companies. User support conversations are direct customer interactions, and offering friendly, helpful support will contribute to a positive user experience. Work with your customer service team to establish a set of standards—like always greeting the customer by name, for example—and emphasize the importance of customer-oriented skills like empathy and active listening. Make sure your team has the resources they need—like detailed product information, protocols, and training—to handle inquiries quickly and effectively.
Train employees
Managers and executives play a large role in shaping corporate culture. Ensure the people at the top of your organization embrace a customer-oriented mindset and are focused on building a customer-centric culture. Communicate your brand values clearly and encourage employees at every level to use consumer experience as a basis for decision-making.
For example, if transparency is a company value, your web team may choose to use clear, everyday language on your product’s webpage as opposed to industry jargon that customers might have a tough time understanding. Additionally, create a system that rewards customer-focused ideas by setting customer satisfaction and retention goals to reinforce your team’s priorities.
Consider user experience
Walk through your customer journey from a user perspective and look for ways to make the process more consumer-friendly. This could involve making design tweaks to improve your website’s functionality or introducing new product features to accommodate customer preferences. An ecommerce business, for example, might add a guest checkout option to accommodate more shoppers or introduce a loyalty program to reward existing customers.
Practice transparency
Communication is the foundation of every successful relationship, and keeping customers up to date on developments can build trust. Depending on the nature of your business, this could involve reaching out to clients when you introduce new features or providing regular email updates to let customers know their orders are on the way.
Example of customer-oriented business: Francis Henri
Katherine Oyer, the founder and CEO of Francis Henri, a children’s apparel and accessories retail store, shares her simple philosophy on building a customer-oriented business on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “If you have a wonderful customer experience and a superior product, people come back,” she says. Katherine uses a blend of customer data, intuition, and her experience as a mother to make business decisions that serve young families. Since its launch, Francis Henri has expanded its product offerings and opened two brick-and-mortar locations.
Here’s how she did it:
Special touches
As a business owner, Katherine takes a customer-centric approach by prioritizing special touches that create a memorable consumer experience. “The customer experience is so important for me, so the things that I will not cut corners on are things like, we send a handwritten thank you card in every package,” she explains. “I wanted the experience of receiving a box to be almost like a gift.”
To Katherine, this element of personalization is an essential way to connect with consumers. So, instead of eliminating thank you cards as the company grew, she identified cost-saving areas like Francis Henri’s shipping boxes and wrapping tissue—details that felt less specific to the company’s brand identity.
Customer-oriented product development
Katherine also uses customer-centric thinking to make product decisions. As a children’s apparel retailer, her target audience is young families. She often uses herself as a sample customer when deciding what to stock and draws on her learnings as a mother to help her understand her company’s ideal customer. “I’m a mom, and I kind of know what I’m looking for,” she says. “As I’m curating, I’m just kind of trying to serve the families that buy from us in all the areas that I find as a mom, things are lacking here in our market.”
Customer feedback loops
In addition to her own experience, Katherine uses customer feedback and transaction data to inform Francis Henri’s merchandising strategy. Once a product launches, she explains, “You can start collecting feedback from your customers. And there’s data from your customers as well, which is something you can use to help decide what to do next for your business.” Listening to customers and looking at sales transactions has helped Katherine and her team identify a core collection of bestselling products that customers love, which helps them determine what to restock. “We’re starting to realize we almost have a collection that we’re starting to call essentials … because it’s just season over season, people ask for it, they come back, they’re buying it, it constantly sells out,” she says.
Francis Henri’s customer-oriented culture extends beyond ecommerce. Katherine tailors her brick-and-mortar stores to appeal to families. “We have a parking lot, we have a back entrance, which pretty much has now become a front entrance, because everyone parks in the lot and brings their stroller in that door,” she says. The simple decision to open the back door to customers made her retail location more accessible for parents.
Customer-oriented FAQ
What is an example of customer orientation?
Customer orientation is a business model that places consumer needs ahead of immediate business needs. A customer-oriented shoe company, for example, could choose to work with a slightly more expensive material to create comfortable, durable shoes. This decision would prioritize customer satisfaction over decreasing operating costs, which could reduce profit margins in the short term but lead to long-term brand trust and profitability.
What is a customer-oriented approach?
A customer-oriented approach to business involves prioritizing consumer needs over corporate needs. This business model places customer needs at the center of decision-making. Customer-oriented companies strive to keep customers happy by tailoring product offerings to align with customer preferences and providing excellent service.
What are customer-oriented skills?
Customer-oriented skills enable positive interactions and clear communication between consumers and companies. Empathy, communication, and active listening are all examples of customer-oriented skills. Developing these skills helps businesses provide excellent customer service and increase customer loyalty.
