One measure of customer-centricity has to be whether, and how well, you know how your customers use your website.   These days your company website is one of your key interfaces with both your existing customers and potential new ones.  The corollary is, of course, what are you doing to ensure “continuous improvement” in this area?

Here’s a quick test to see how well you know your customer’s use of your website.  ….

1.   Do you know the top 10 search keywords that are used on your website?

When a customer (new or existing) arrives at your main page, they usually have a purpose in mind, even if they find it by accident.  Do they have to flip through lots of pages to find what they want, or do you have a search function installed (it’s usually called Enterprise Search)?  Enterprise Search systems can provide lots of great data on customer interests and behaviour.

2.   Do you know if your customers are happy with what they found for these (and any other) keywords?

If the performance of your website is poor, the majority of visitors who managed to find it will have abandoned it after three futile clicks trying to find information.  Again, an Enterprise Search function can generate metrics that can help to optimize the customer experience.

3.   Is there anyone in your organization whose job performance is directly linked to the level of customer satisfaction with the company website?

Most website owners would agree that providing Enterprise Search is one of the most important ways to provide a more customer-focused website.  This, combined with rich content and as much self-service support as possible, goes a long way to appear customer-centric (even if it’s not built into the corporate culture).

Extrapolating a bit leads to the conclusion is that there are multiple ways to be more customer-centric.  One is in the human interactions throughout the supply chains, where collaboration and communication tools can play a significant role.  The other is in the customer/system interfaces that support access to information and self-serve transactions (using BYOD of course).  Both of these need the IT department to place customer-centricity as a key up-front requirement for all systems developments.

Just as we used to have guidelines for how fast a telephone should be answered, now we need to be sure that the website provides excellent, responsive service as well.  A good web design team and enterprise search systems may just be your most valuable secret weapons!