Dictionary.com defines “customer-centric” as placing the customer at the center of a company’s marketing effort, focusing on the customer rather than sales. According to Customers.com, the customer-centric organization creates products, processes, policies, and a culture designed to support customers in their endeavors and provide them with a great experience as they are working toward their goals. This customer-centricity can also apply to associations.
Although one can assume that all associations are “member-centric”, based on my knowledge about associations here in the Philippines, I could say that not all associations embrace and embed a “member-centric business” philosophy. So how can an association be member-centric?
The answers may lie in this seven-pillar tool developed by Emilie Kroner, which came out from the Marketing Insights e-newsletter of the American Marketing Association that provides a framework for action, giving organizations the insights needed to track, measure and improve in seven core areas. By analyzing customers’ perceptions against these pillars, marketers have a blueprint for customer-centric activation to drive customer loyalty. Here are the seven core pillars and how they help boost
customer loyalty:
- Experience: Make the customer experience easy, enjoyable and convenient. Companies that excel in customer experience make their customers so happy that they want to share their positive interactions with your brand.
- Loyalty: Reward and recognize customers in a consistent way that is relevant to how they want to be rewarded.
- Communications: Personalize the message to customers, based upon what they buy, and in a way they like. Highly communicative companies provide tailored, relevant communications based on customer preferences.
- Assortment: Have the right products and a strong variety to meet customers’ needs. Companies should not necessarily have the widest selection of products, but they should stock the ones their customers want.
- Promotions: Leverage promotions on the items that are most appealing and often purchased by current customers. Companies with successful promotions programs promote the products that matter the most to customers.
- Price: Provide prices that are perceived to be in line with what the customer is looking for on the products they purchase most often. Brands don’t have to be the price leaders, but they do need to have pricing that customers perceive as fair.
- Feedback: Hear and recognize customer concerns. Companies that rank high in customer feedback have a two-way conversation and emotional connection with their customers.
From the above seven pillars, try substituting “member” to “customer” and “associations” to “companies” and you will notice that the framework can also apply to associations and other member-based organizations. Associations here can learn a thing or two on being member-centric organizations and henceforth become successful
and sustainable.
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The column contributor, Octavio “Bobby” Peralta, is concurrently the secretary-general of the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP) and the CEO and founder of the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives (PCAAE). PCAAE is holding the Associations Summit 5 (AS5) on November 22 and 23 at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), which is expected to draw over 200 association professionals here and abroad. The two-day event is supported by ADFIAP, the Tourism Promotions Board and the PICC.
E-mail inquiries@adfiap.org for more details on AS5.
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