In conversation with Marksmen Daily
The building blocks of customer-centric organisations
Brands today are facing a rather challenging arena as they are being held to higher standards by their consumers. The pandemic shifted the preference of end consumers towards brands that have an active social consciousness, focusing on sustainability, optimising digital innovation to fulfil their commitments to the consumer, and creating a more seamless, engaging customer journey. Through all of this, it is critical to consistently communicate the right message to the right audience across relevant platforms and in a creative and engaging format.
All these facets can broadly be classified under two very important categories that are critical to the success of any business – brand integrity, and customer-centricity.
Customer Experience: A Strategic Brand Pillar
Customer is key, and brands that keep the customer's experience at the very centre of their business strategy often see more success than others. Leaders must foster customer-centricity across their organisations by brainstorming tasks and projects that revolve around the customer.
To be truly considered as a customer-centric entity, it is essential that all the departments within the organisation work together as one single organism. And to achieve this, you have to ensure that you have the right processes, tools, and people in place. Similarly, it is also vital to listen to customer concerns and grievances in order to identify areas to work on, or opportunities to capitalise on in order to turn their frown upside down.
A way to gauge how well your brand treats your customers can be considering long-term evaluations rather than short term successes. Right from the initial engagement with the customer, it is crucial to ensure that their overall end-to-end journey and experience with you is highly appealing and convenient for them in order to retain their loyalty to your brand
Saying that brand integrity is about how our customers perceive our products, brand image, and reputation is easy. But it is when you break it down to actionable focus areas, you realise the importance of thenitty-gritty to maintaining your brand integrity. In short, it's not just a race, but a marathon. It's essential to treat your brand as a person and consider how this 'person' would introduce themselves. This ideation process helps you establish your brand's purpose and message, which helps create an authentic and relatable communication strategy that brands can adopt to engage with their customers.
A very important point to note here is that it is essential to maintain consistency and cohesiveness in your communication with the customer across all the platforms you use. Change is the one constant in the world; a consumer's preference today might change tomorrow. Being agile is vital to maintaining a strong brand, so long as it does not lead the brand to deviate from its core values. While many more factors contribute to the success of a business, getting these two elements right leads is similar to successfully scaling a very rocky mountain. Thus, a highly successful brand considers customer experience is the most important driver for success and is purpose-driven and agile in order to maintain brand integrity over longer durations.
Trends to keep an eye on
As the world becomes increasingly globalised, the demand for logistics remains at an all-time high. The recent pandemic has changed the way in which brands look at their operations, right from the sourcing until final delivery. Thus, logistics providers need to stay ahead of innovations and trends within the industry to cater to customers’ requirements.
Today, a key focus of businesses is to build resilience in their supply chain, and logistics providers need to establish services that ease this experience for them. Tech-enablement goes a long way in maintaining a competitive advantage, and advancements like AI, Machine Learning, IoT, and Blockchain are already changing the way we operate. Digital tools can be optimised to provide complete visibility and access to real-time updates from anywhere in the world and ease manual processes.
Similarly, another key trend that is steadily gaining more voice is the call for sustainability. With issues around climate change, there is a shift that we’ve observed in end consumer behaviour. They prefer purchasing from brands that visibly display their commitment to sustainability throughout their value chain. This includes adopting a sustainable logistics network, thus creating a need for logistics providers to step up their efforts in this regard.
This initiative was brought to you by Team Marksmen, which unravels the unique challenges faced by modern-day businesses by offering solution-oriented knowledge platforms that serve a multitude of industries. These platforms, such as Most Trusted Brands of India and Business Icons of India, provide your personal or professional brand a chance to be front and centre to an apt audience. Additionally, the team delivers thought-provoking content via Marksmen Daily, which offers highly specialised branded content, and actionable insights from across industries.
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