3 Proven Factors that Win Over Customers

Since the Covid pandemic began, we’ve conducted more than 5,000 customer interviews in over 30 industries. We’ve covered the gamut: from tech and cloud computing to packaging and specialty chemicals. We’ve interviewed individuals in more than 42 countries on behalf of companies riding high through the turbulent times as well as others that have suffered major setbacks in the market.

Along the way, we’ve remained watchful for common success factors present with companies that are winning big in their markets. We’ve seen several, but three stand out as universally applicable to nearly any business.

1. Deliver an Exceptional Customer Experience. Having a reliable system platform or producing a quality product is not enough. The businesses that are winning the hearts and minds of customers are those that strive to make outstanding customer service a differentiator.

They realize that going the extra mile for customers leaves a lasting impression—and they’ve figured out how to cultivate this quality from within. They’ve learned that providing true customer service starts by recruiting service-oriented people. They’ve invested in customer empathy training for everyone—not just the customer service team. They believe in empowerment. They challenge staff to go beyond simply satisfying customers to delighting them. They promote leaders that inspire their teams to treat customers right.

With these messages in mind, these organizations have made loving the customer a primary element of their service. They’ve made delivering a superior customer experience a core value for the company—and it’s working.

2. Being Easy to Do Business With. Committing to delivering an exceptional customer experience (factor #1) is a start, but what solidifies goodwill is when a business designs its processes to be customer friendly.

Take Amazon, for example: in its early days, Jeff Bezos declared that Amazon would be the “Earth’s most customer-centric company.” He employed an army of software engineers and developers to create a straightforward end-to-end customer experience.

Every facet of the process from ordering to monitoring shipments, processing a return, and even updating credit card details was designed with the customer in mind.

We’re seeing this same thought process with more progressive B2B companies. They’ve redesigned business methods to deliver accelerated responses, accommodate a last-minute change or request, and elevate the empowerment of front-line employees. They’re making their businesses hassle-free—plain and simple. And they’ve done so by looking in the mirror and questioning everything with one thought in mind: “how could we make this easier for the customer?”

3. Leveraging Digital Technology to Enhance the Customer Experience. Unless you’ve been living off the grid, our daily lives are more and more reliant on digital, self-service technology. Whether it’s using the self-checkout at the grocery store, finding self-help videos on YouTube, or paying bills online, seemingly everything these days can be done without human intervention.

The more progressive B2B organizations have caught on and are going digital. They’ve embraced the movement known as “digitalization,” meaning adopting digital technologies to modify a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities.

They’ve taken this broad term, “digitalization,” and applied it to their businesses—whether that means creating an online ordering platform, a customer portal, a company YouTube channel, etc. The possibilities are endless, but using technology to enhance the customer’s experience of engaging with your company is here to stay.

We’ve seen these factors deliver success again and again the past few years. Those that pull ahead and stay there are paying attention to them—and so are we. Now that you know these factors, your firm can harness them for success too; as they say, when we know better, we can do better.