We all know that today’s market is customer-driven: the competition is increasing in almost all fields and users now have more choices than they ever had before.

They’re also more empowered and smart when it comes to making decisions and knowing what’s best for them.

So, how are modern businesses responding to this shift in customer expectations? By becoming more customer-oriented and prioritizing customers’ experiences over their own perceptions of their business.

In a market where 89% of companies whose customer service can be characterized as “significantly above average” achieve better results than their competitors, how can you create a customer-oriented strategy that puts you in a position to succeed?

Here are some strategies and tools to help you prioritize user-centricity.

5 Ways to build a customer oriented strategy

Let’s get started with strategies. Here are some things you can do to instantly improve the way you treat your customers. 

1. Start making personalized videos

There’s no doubt that personalization is on the rise: people even get frustrated when their shopping experience isn’t customized to their interests and previous purchases.

At the same time, people seem to want to see more video content, especially the younger audiences.

Putting these two big trends together gives us a product that’s currently in high demand: personalized video.

With this content format, you can engage your users at multiple points in their purchasing experience – sign-up, first purchase, loyalty programs – all with highly personalized content that talks to them directly. No generic messages, no corny brand communication: simple, face-to-face messages that allow you to create a deeper connection with your audience.

One of our clients – Luxe Fitness – used this approach to boost trial conversions by 29% in one month.

They did it with videos like this one:

There’s no need for fancy equipment or expensive production teams – all you need is an honest and straightforward approach.

You can use several types of personalized videos to engage your audience:

• Demo videos. Showcase your product and its core features for those prospects looking for functionality.

• Customer testimonials. Use social proof to show your prospects how your product/service is already helping users with similar issues.

• Tutorials. Use techniques like screen recording, voiceover, and subtitles to explain specific functionalities of your product in great detail.

• Animated videos. Tell interesting stories about your product and brand history with vivid colors.

• “Thank you” videos. Onboard new customers, thank your donors for their contributions and turn first-time buyers into loyal advocates.

2. Invest in good customer service

If you want to be more customer-oriented, you need to admit that you might not be doing everything you could be doing in the customer service field.

Do your customers have all the options for contacting you quickly and easily? What is your response time? Do you track user histories? Do you have adequate help desk software?

You need to ask yourself all these and many other questions if you want to excel at customer service.

Here’s a tip you can follow right now to see instant changes: implement a live chat and/or a chatbot on your website. Live chat is currently second when it comes to customer satisfaction, only trailing phone calls.

Source: Kandy

More importantly, live chat response times are incredibly low, giving your customers a chance to get quick responses. It almost takes as long to get through to an agent on the phone as to start and finish a conversation via live chat.

Additionally, chatbots can help you answer some simple questions quickly and reduce your response times even further. While they might not be able to solve complex queries and have elaborate conversations with your customers, they’ll provide them with quick pointers and answers to the most common questions, reducing your agents’ workload.

3. Use customer surveys and feedback

Another good idea is to see what your customers expect from you – not just assume it.

By using a customer survey, you might be surprised to see that some of the solutions you were certain to solve a certain problem are in fact cumbersome and not that favored among your users. There is really no other way to know what kind of customer service approach will work unless you ask your customers.

User surveys allow you to ask all sorts of questions: you can see which types of products which demographic groups prefer, you can see which of your competitors is the most popular among your users, and even identify some upsell opportunities.

Source: HubSpot

Customer surveys have another important effect: they show your customers you care about their opinions. So, no matter what kind of answers you get, you’ll stay in their mind as a brand that appreciates feedback.

And, if you can apply that feedback to really make some changes – even better!

4. Personalize your website

One of the pillars of a good customer-driven marketing strategy is a personalized website.

Nothing says that you care about your customers as a website that uses their interests and previous interactions to give them a tailored experience. Personalized product recommendations, shopping lists, content suggestions – all those things can be incorporated into your website to give a unique experience to each visitor.

We’re all familiar with Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, and other big names that have popularized the personalization algorithm in the past decade.

All of these platforms make sure that:

• You have the best possible offer that is specifically curated for you

• You keep spending more time (or money) on their platform by exploring relevant offers and content
  
  

Source: Viable Synergy

Implementing some personalization techniques on your website will show your customers that you care about their experience and you keep your offer fresh!

But, you can also customize your website with other things in mind: the current weather, your visitors’ locations and demographics, and much more.

5. Use the sales funnel

Finally, you can try out another staple of customer-centric marketing: the sales funnel.

The sales funnel is based on the fact that each of your customers is at a certain point in their journey when it comes to the level of familiarity they have with your brand. Some of them have already made their purchase while others are yet to discover your offer. Some might be between these two – they’re aware of your brand but still aren’t too familiar with the specifics of your offer.

The idea behind implementing the sales funnel is that you need to address these groups of customers with different messages, based on the stage they occupy in the funnel.

Here is how a typical sales funnel looks:

Source: AB Tasty

So, for example, a prospect in the Awareness stage is someone who has a problem that they’re trying to solve but they’re still not aware that your problem can do that for them. The prospects in this stage should be targeted with more general content about your brand and your hero products so that they can start considering your brand as a solution to the problem and move into the next stage.

The further down the funnel you go, the higher the level of familiarity with your brand. The customers that are closer to making a purchase can be targeted with more “salesy” content like discounts, promotions, etc.

5 Tools to help you become more customer-focused

Now, let’s take a look at some tools that can help you make this whole process a lot easier and meet your customers’ expectations.

1. Bonjoro: Personalized video

When we created Bonjoro, our main goal was to bring personalization into the spotlight by allowing small businesses to create personalized videos with no equipment, no production costs, and no coding knowledge.

Bonjoro does just that: it gives you a chance to create fun, engaging videos on your own. All you need is a willingness to commit to your customers and be honest in your presentation!

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our experience, it’s that customers love that personal touch they get with our videos and our clients find them incredibly easy to make. 

The best thing about personalized videos is that they can achieve amazing results – one of our clients found that adding personalized video to his emails increased his view rate to 80%!

2. SurveyMonkey: Customer surveys

If you want to follow our tips and start using customer surveys to get feedback and improve your product, you’ll likely need a good customer survey tool.

SurveyMonkey has been at the top of the industry for a while with their visually appealing solution that’s easy to use and comes with lots of templates to help you get started. So, for example, you can choose their “Market Research – Product Survey” template to get feedback about your product but also their “Customer Service” survey template to see how your users are responding to your customer service initiatives.

Source: SurveyMonkey

Once you’re done with the survey, the platform provides useful analytics tools to make sense of your results and analyze them from different aspects.

SurveyMonkey has a free plan, although you’ll likely want to upgrade at least to the Individual Advantage plan to get the most out of the tool.

3. Hyperise: Website personalization

Personalizing your website sounds like a lot of work but all you really need is an automation tool that can enable you to leverage tags and set everything up without writing a line of code.

That’s what Hyperise does – it allows you to personalize your website for your visitors’ names, locations, job titles, company websites, and much more. It all happens through their interactive interface so you don’t have to consult your developer friends or google on how to change HTML code.

Here is what we mean:

Source: Hyperise

This is how Hyperise’s homepage looks like when personalized for Apple’s Tim Cook: it uses his name, his company name, company website, and logo to deliver a tailored experience!

And, personalized CTAs have been found to increase conversion rates by up to 202% so it might pay off to start thinking about making some changes to your website.

4. Zendesk: Customer service on multiple channels

We already mentioned how being more customer-service-oriented means being present on as many channels as possible.

Zendesk has been one of the most popular solutions in this category for years: they make customer service easier by allowing your agents to collaborate and manage all customer interactions in one place.

Its centralized workspace gives you all the tools you need to answer customer questions and share all the information they need at the moment they need it.

You can meet your customers on social networks, email, live chat, voice, and even build an integrated community forum or help center on your website.

Source: Zendesk

5. Google Analytics: Better knowledge of your customers

Finally, you can’t be customer-oriented without knowing who those customers are.

Google Analytics might be free but it’s one of the best tools you can use to understand your customers and their interactions with your website. You can see which of your products are the most popular, which pages are the most visited, and which demographics visit your website the most.

You almost can’t run a successful online business without relying on Google Analytics to learn about your customers. You could, but it would be much harder.

Source: Databox

Conclusion: Building a customer oriented strategy for your business

Nowadays, businesses love to claim that they’re “customer-oriented”. Everyone puts their “customers first” and “values your opinion”.

But, not everyone is doing all they can to make this happen.

Follow some of the tips on this list, explore some of these tools, and you’ll be one big step closer to edging out your competition!

And, if you want to explore personalized videos, Bonjoro can help. Register for your free trial in a few moments and jump on the latest trend in personalization that can help you build long-lasting relationships with your customers!