This document provides a five-step guide to building a customer-centric company, emphasizing the importance of defining a relatable company culture, empowering employees, designing products with customer input, creating useful content, and fostering dialogue with customers. Each step includes actionable checklists and examples from various companies to illustrate best practices. The overall goal is to enhance customer experience and differentiate the company from competitors.

1. 5STEPS GUIDE
TO BUILDING
a customer-centric company

2. WHAT DOES
customer-centric mean?
according to the business dictionnary
«Creating a positive customer experience at the point of sale
and post sale.
A customer centric approach can add value to a company by
enabling it to differentiate itself from competitors who do not
offer the same experience»

3. IN PRACTICE
it looks a bit like that
customer
service
YOUR CUSTOMERS
product
development
marketing
corporate
culture
sales

4. BASICALLY,
everything your company does
is done with your customers’
best interests in mind
Click here to read our full
definition of customer centricity!

5. ARE YOU READY
to become wonderfully
customer-centric?
HECK YES!
Click here to get a surprise
(if you don’t like surprises, just go on to the next slide)

6. 1DEFINE A
COMPANY CULTURE
that customers
will love

7. FIND VALUES
customers can identify with
Airbnb recently fully rethought their
identity and marketing strategy. While
doing that they looked at how people
where using their service. It wasn’t
just about cheap accomodation. It was
about living like a local for few days
and eventually feeling like home. Hence
their «Belong anywhere» sloggan.

8. TELL
your personal story
Ben & Jerry are really attached to their
brand’s history. They created it from
scratch, starting with a 5 cents
course on ice-cream making and a
renovated gas station. Today, they
continue to observe traditions born
at the beginning like the Free Cone
Day born 1 year after the opening of
their first store as a celebration

9. HAVE
some fun
Think Geek employees are all emerged
in the geek culture they sell. They have
toys produced by the company around
the office, they often dress up as their
favorite characters. To make sure
everyone fits in the company even lets
customers ask interview questions
to future employees like «Who’s your
favorite Ninja Turtle?»

10. Your company culture checklist
1. Find values customers will love
Have a brainstorming session with employees
Ask customers why they chose your company, what makes you different
Mix employees and customers’ values together
Hang your values on the wall, communicate them to every new employee
2. Tell your personal story
Write down the story of how and why your company was founded
Communicate this story on your website and social media
Make sure your employees know this story

11. 3. Have some fun
Have some office and out of office fun with employees
Post behind the scene photos on social media (Facebook’s great for that)
Add a dose of fun in your copy-writing, marketing, design
Define your brand’s voice and train employees to use it (Define standard
fun greetings, set up the tone you want to use in all communications)
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THIS CHECKLIST

12. 2EMPOWER
EMPLOYEES
to help
customers

13. DON ’T
use scripts
A truly amazing chat transcript from
Netflix generated quite a lot of buzz in
the customer service community. The
rep introduced himself as Captain
Mike of the Good Ship Netflix,
leading the way for one of the funniest
customer service conversation I’ve ever
read. And yes, you got it, this could
never happen with scripts!

14. TRAIN EMPLOYEES
to get creative
Whole Foods relies on excellent
customer service and employees have
to come up with creative ideas to
delight customers. For example, a
customer was once looking for
whipped cream and couldn’t find it.
They were simply out of the product.
But instead of just apologizing, a clerk
decided to make homemade
whipped cream for the customer.

15. MESURE
what matters to customers
Instead of tracking average
handling time or upselling rates
Zappos evaluate their customer
service employees on their ability
to make a Personal Emotional
Connection. They are encouraged
to ask about a dog if they hear one
barking on the background or talk
about holiday plans and so on...

16. Your employee empowerment
checklist
1. Don’t use scripts
Define guidelines that allow employees to talk naturally
Ask employees how they think they could get better at helping customers
Assign a senior / mentor employee to all newcomers
Run short regular training sessions partly created by employees
2. Train employees to get creative
Publicly acknowledge good ideas and initiatives
Set clear rules for what employees can and can’t do

17. Run regular customer service brainstorming sessions with both
customer service employees and people from other departments
3. Mesure what matters to customers
Try new ways to ask customers for feedback (email, phone call, on website)
Don’t limit feedback to a 1 to 5 rating system
Try defining 1 new evaluation metric that really affects customer satisfaction
Monitor average handling time but don’t judge employees on it
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THIS CHECKLIST

18. 3DESIGN
YOUR PRODUCT
for and with
customers

19. GATHER
product ideas from customers
The ecommerce software brand
created a Reddit like forum to
gather customers ideas and
suggestions and let them vote on
the best ones. Winning
suggestions are then quickly
implemented as new features
that customers already love!

20. INVEST IN
a good user experience
Twosocks.com has done an
awesome job on their website’s
design and UX. Customers can for
example click a «PLAY» button to
randomly display 3 items like you’d
have on a cash machine. Or they
can search items by personality
(including geek, megalo maniac,
indecisive...)

21. DESIGN
for emotions
Mailchimp, not only provides a
super easy to use emailing tool,
but also engages its users in a very
original and fun way. You get a
highfive after sending a
campaign or have to push a red
button to validate the sending. You
can also make your own little
paper Freddie (their mascott) .

22. Your product design checklist
1. Gather product ideas from customers
Don’t simply ask for feedback, ask for what would make your product better
Create a community where customers can share ideas
Monitor what users are saying about you and your competitors
Get customer insights from your sales and customer service teams
2. Invest in a good user experience
Make your website as simple to browse as possible
Use heatmaps to see where your visitors are clicking

23. Make it easy for customers to share your products with friends
Build a 3 steps check out process (items, client infos, payment)
3. Design for emotions
Write down funny call to actions
Create a sense of emergency (only 1 left in stock, order now to get 20% off)
Use a person or mascott to represent your brand
Insert rewards after customers accomplished an action (points, highfive...)
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THIS CHECKLIST

24. 4CREATE
CONTENT
that’s useful
to your customers

25. PUBLISH
useful case studies
The Inbound Marketing Software
regularly publishes case studies of
how their customers use Hubspot.
What they do really well is that they
allow you to browse case studies
by size of the company or
industry. It makes it easier to find
people you can relate to

26. INVITE
guest bloggers to post
Buffer always had an amazing blog
with highly data oriented content.
They opened it to guest posting
recently and it’s been an even
greater pleasure to read it. They
managed to get guest posts that
comply with their overall content
strategy and perfectly match their
own content.

27. MAKE IT
visual and easy to process
Kissmetrics based a large
part of their content
marketing strategy on
creating high quality
infographics. They make it
easy for their professional
clients to quickly browse data
and share it with their team
and contacts.

28. Your content creation checklist
1. Publish useful case studies
Let customers know you are publishing case studies on your blog
Make it easy for them to get involved (create a survey, call them...)
Advertise case studies in guest posts for other blogs / websites
2. Invite guest bloggers to post
Monitor other blogs in your industry to see who’s guest posting there
Personally contact potential guests with an idea of article
Advertise guest blogging opportunities on your blog and social media

29. 3. Make it visual and easy to process
Publish infographics and recycle them as Slides, Pinterest boards...
Insert visual data inside your articles to make them easy to scan
Add pictures to your tweets and Facebook posts
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THIS CHECKLIST

30. 5ENCOURAGE
DIALOGUE
with your
customers

31. INVITE THEM TO
reply to your automated emails
Unbounce sends pretty amazing
emails to their clients. What’s
amazing about them is that they
don’t come from a no-follow
address. On the contrary, they invite
users to answer, ask questions,
talk about their own issues. An
excellent way to gather feedback
and show customers you care.

32. BE SOCIAL
on social media
I remember tweeting about a
presentation from Zendesk on
Slideshare. The slides were great
but what really got me is that they
replied to my tweet the next day
with a question about the
presentation. Way better than a
simple thank you, they actually
pushed me to interact with them.

33. BE EA SY
to reach with live chat
As a live chat provider, we’ve
been using live chat on our
website since the beginning and
it’s been an interesting ride. It’s
a great way to get to talk to
people who are just
browsing and want a little
more information quickly before
they make their decision.

34. Your customer dialogue checklist
1. Invite them to reply to your automated emails
Use a do-follow email address
Ask a question at the end of your newsletter or automated emails
Sign emails with your real name and direct email address
2. Be social on social media
Thank people who share your content
Ask them about their thoughts and opinion on the content they shared
Share content from your customers

35. 3. Be easy to reach with live chat
Answer all the questions you get (even if they are not related to you)
Use proactive invite to show customers you’re there
Follow-up after chat conversations
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36. ABOUT CUSTOMERICARE
a simple live video chat plugin
to show customers you care
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37. THANK YOU!
connect with us on social media
and at http://customericare.com