Customer Centric Design | Accelerator

Customer Centric Design

In the last section we talked about our Why. Now it is time to look at our Why from a customer centric approach.

Customer Centricity is the practice of making your business more about your customers than about you. It is how you make your customers feel before, during and after a transaction with your company. Customer centricity often increases brand loyalty because your customers feel each transaction is more about them than about the sale. You are taking their needs into account versus imposing your beliefs about what they need on to them.  Take into account what they think they want though note that the customer is not always right.

This quote is often attributed to Henry Ford, creator of the Ford Motor Company. Before the invention of motorized vehicles, customers may very well have wanted faster horses. This is where you read between the lines. Did the customers want faster horses or simply a faster way to travel? Ford looked at what his customers desired and found a new way to fulfill their needs.

When you look at your business, look at it through the eyes of the customer. What do they see? How do they feel about you, your product or your service? What does the customer really want? A faster horse or a faster way to get from Point A to Point B? It is important to ask your clients for feedback. Customers look at products and services in numerous ways including(but not limited to):

• visual effect
• touch (finish and feel)
• colour
• ease of use
• sound
• cost
• durability

It is vital that you look at your product or service from the customer’s point of view when using a customer centric approach. You will want to use your product under the same conditions as your customer will use it. This includes your website! As you get ready to build your website, product or service, consider how your customer will interact with it.

Let’s look at the website since most of you will be building one soon. What special needs may your customer have that you do not?  In terms of a website, how is your customer accessing the site? Is your website responsive so that it will render correctly regardless of whether your customer accesses it using their mobile device, tablet, laptop or desktop? Is the text easy to read? Do your colours flow nicely? Light text on a dark background can be difficult for some people to read. Text that is too small or too large can also make reading difficult. Do you have more than one page on your website? How easy is it to navigate to different sections of your site? Can your customer access the site using a screen reader or other accessibility tools? It is important to test your site on numerous platforms, different computers and different browsers – just as if you were your customer accessing it. Is your website GDRP compliant? What other needs might your customers have?