5 Customer-Centric Brands That Stand Out in Competitive Industries

 We've previously defined customer centricity as "a way of doing business so that every team and department foster a positive customer experience, at every stage of the customer journey."

But despite this definition, customer centricity is one of those "you know it when you see it" sort of things.

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We've all heard the classic examples of Apple, Amazon, Zappos, and Southwest Airlines, and how their customer focus helped them create brand new categories. But are there other customer-centric companies that we can study and learn from?

As it turns out, yes. In this piece, we'll dive deeper into five brands that are not only customer-centric, but whose focus on the customer helped them break into incredibly competitive, established industries.vs. 

Customer-Centric vs. Product-Centric 

Product-centric companies focus on the products they bring to the market as a way to measure success and determine strategy. Customer-centric companies focus on the customers that buy their product or service as a way to measure success and determine strategy. Most successful companies are focused on both products and customers, but this distinction is determined by the metrics and questions that are used to develop their strategy and determine their priorities as a business.

Product-centric companies often sell products that don't require a lot of effort to purchase. For example, Solo, the plastic cup company, is more product-centric because there aren't many tough buying decisions that go into purchasing a sleeve of plastic cups. Its customers are more concerned with getting a good value for their purchase rather than building a business relationship with the brand. Solo doesn't need to be as customer-centric because their customers value financial needs overall emotional ones.

Customer-centric companies instead rely on their customers' successes. These businesses are more focused on fulfilling needs that extend beyond their product or service, creating a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with their customers. Customers achieve their goals using the company's products and services, and the company profits from the customer's continued dependence on their brand. These companies typically work very closely with their customers because they're highly invested in customer success.

It isn't a good or a bad thing to be product-centric or customer-centric. In fact, the two ends of the spectrum ideally go hand-in-hand. Think about it: If you're focused on what your customers are telling you and asking for, you're likely launching successful, high-growth products, too.

In the next section, we put together a list of companies who are well-known for their customer-centric (CC) strategies.

Customer-Centric Companies

  1. Slack
  2. SnapTravel
  3. Mailshake
  4. Segment
  5. Paul Reed Smith Guitars
  6. Whirlaway Sports
  7. SeatGeek
  8. HubSpot

1. Slack

Why is it Slack great? Some argue it's the usability. Others like how it integrates seamlessly with other services. Others say the way you share all types of files from documents to images to code, so easily. I could probably write several posts attempting to diagnose what makes Slack so magical, but one thing is clear: Slack won by being intuitive.

Customer-Centric Strategy: Offers intuitive user-interface and features. 

In 2013, hadn't the world seen enough messaging apps?

Between IRC, Microsoft Messenger, GChat, Hipchat and more, it would seem the history books could be closed on messaging. Then Slack came along.

Since publicly announcing its launch in August 2013, Slack has gone absolutely gangbusters, booking a rumored $1 billion in revenue in 2017. And that's with almost no marketing budget to start out with. And just speaking anecdotally, I have yet to meet a person who doesn't like Slack.

 

Personally, I describe my love for Slack as follows: It lets me do anything I could think to do with a messaging platform, and then some. It's not any one feature–it's that it has nearly every feature I could ever want, and each of those features in it of itself are incredible.

I'm one of those people that emails files to themselves rather than growing up and using Dropbox. I remember discovering that I could send myself a message via Slack. And not only that, the message reads ‘Jot something down' instead of ‘Message [username]' as it does in other channels.

That level of product execution and attention to detail can only be achieved through talking to users and intensely focusing on their needs. In fact, Slack took seven months to get feedback from teams of all shape and size between their first complete version, and their launch version. As founder and CEO Stuart Butterfield said, "When key users told us something wasn't working, we fixed it — immediately."

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