Research should be the Center of Customer Centrism

Customer-centrism is a way of doing business with your customer in a way that provides a positive customer experience before and after sales. When this is developed and sustained, there will be a surge in repeat business, customer loyalty as well as profits. According to financial experts, a business or organizations that have embraced customer centrism is a company that offers more than just good services.

Despite the fact that customer centrism is key to the development and growth of business and organizations, little emphasis has been accorded to it. Most businesses, especially the microfinance sectors are struggling to remain afloat because they have not embraced the customer centrism approach.

More than 400 government, private and nonprofit organizations that convened in Accra Ghana for this year’s symposium on financial inclusion organized by the MasterCard Foundation, agreed that there is little research that has been done in ensuring that businesses take to customer centrism to enhance their productivity.

During the discussion, it emerged that the microfinance sector is a sorry State with the majority of them in both developing and developed world has failed to focus on the customer from the moment they launch their businesses. Means they have no idea how best to treat customers. In every business, a customer has to be given the first priority because every service and product that is developed is aimed at satisfying the needs of the customer. If these needs are not satisfied, customers move out in search of other service providers that will fully satisfy them.

“One reason why sectors like the insurance & microfinance have not grown is that they have no idea or clue on how best to attract customers who can help them grow & scale their businesses to the next level. My hope is that MasterCard Foundation can look at inviting microfinance players and insurance sector people to look at customer-centrism, especially for Kenya,” noted one of the participants, Steve Biko Wafula who is also a resident financial and investment analyst.

Most small-medium enterprises in Africa have failed to acknowledge and focus on the needs, desires, hopes, and aspirations of the customer which should be the holy grail of any businesses strategy. They have, instead, chosen to focus solely on profits and on how to increase sales. How can you make profits and increase sales without putting the customer into consideration?

“The fact we need to remind entrepreneurs to put the customer first, says a lot about how confused we are as entrepreneurs in understanding our own business strategies that are meant to help us grow. Developers are another group of innovators who have no idea what the customer needs & what customer centrism is all about. We develop what we want instead of what the customer needs,” noted Mr. Biko.

According to most financial analysts and advocates of financial inclusion, the focus should be on customer centrism with research as the focal point to be able to understand the behavioral aspect of customers hence design products and services around this hence giving a chance to our businesses to grow.

Any discussion on customers should have research on how best to understand the behavioral nature of the customer and how best to collect the data, analyses it and deploy the feedback for Biz to grow.