How to Be More Customer-Centric in Your Small Business

There’s always going to be a company charging less for your same offering. If you try to compete with them, you’ll find yourself in a race to the bottom.

So, how do you set your business apart and thrive?

Customer centricity.

By putting your customers first and improving their experience with your business, you can build lasting loyalty and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

In fact, according to a joint study by Adobe and Oxford Economics, businesses that prioritize customer experience (CX) see a 12% boost in repeat business, a 17% increase in referral rates, and a 23% rise in customer acquisition.

By the end of this guide, you’ll understand what customer centricity is (and isn’t!), how to demonstrate it across your business, and how contact center software can help you deliver on it.

What Is Customer Centricity?

Customer centricity is a business strategy that places the customer at the heart of every decision and action, from product development to post-purchase support.

Rather than prioritizing quick sales and immediate transactions, customer-centric companies focus on creating value for their customers and building ongoing relationships.

Here’s how that might look in practice at a software company:

Customer-Centric Organization	Product-Centric Organization
✔️ Releases new features and updates based on customer feedback	❌ Releases updates based on its internal roadmap and shareholder pressure
✔️ Solves customer issues quickly	❌ Prioritizes acquiring new customers over solving existing customer issues and improving the product
✔️ Communicates with customers transparently, keeping them informed of changes and updates	❌ Keeps customers in the dark about issues, delays, or updates
✔️ Values long-term customer relationships over short-term profit	❌ Values short-term profits over long-term customer loyalty
✔️ Personalizes the customer experience	❌ Fails to leverage customer data for personalization, leading to generic interactions
✔️ Proactively addresses potential issues before they inconvenience customers	❌ Reacts to issues slowly and only after they arise

Asana is a good example of a customer-centric business.

Here’s an example of how the company uses its email newsletter to update users on new platform developments:

Pay attention to how the email copy (in this case, the bullet points) emphasizes how the new improvements make the customers’ lives easier. The customer is the star of the show, not the new product additions.

What Customer Centricity Isn’t

Here are three concepts you might be confusing with customer centricity and how they’re different.

Customer centricity isn’t product centricity

A product-centric approach focuses on creating a superior product, with the belief that the quality and features alone will attract customers. The emphasis is on innovation and technical excellence.

While recognizing the importance of product quality, a customer-centric approach centers on how the product fits into the customer’s life.

Rather than just promoting the product’s features, the focus is on providing solutions tailored to customers’ needs and improving their overall experience. The goal isn’t just to build a great product but to ensure it truly serves the customer and solves their problems.

Customer centricity isn’t CX

CX focuses on how customers feel during specific interactions with your brand, such as shopping, using a product, or reaching out for support.

Creating a CX strategy is about managing and improving those touchpoints to create positive impressions and improve customer retention and advocacy.

Customer centricity, on the other hand, is a broader approach that puts the customer at the center of all business decisions. It shapes long-term strategies designed to meet customer needs at every level, which in turn enhances CX.

While CX is about individual interactions, customer centricity drives the company’s overall commitment to delivering value across the entire customer journey.

Customer centricity isn’t customer support (CS)

CS steps in when issues come up, helping customers solve problems. This might mean troubleshooting login issues or resolving billing discrepancies. It’s a crucial but reactive function.

Customer centricity is a proactive strategy. It focuses on preventing issues by anticipating customer needs, designing products and services that minimize friction, and addressing concerns before they escalate.

It also ensures that customer feedback is used to improve (not just support) the entire customer experience.

How to Demonstrate Customer Centricity

To truly demonstrate customer centricity, prioritize customer needs in every interaction and decision.

You can start by:

• Actively collecting and acting on customer feedback
• Personalizing the customer experience
• Solving problems proactively
• Empowering employees to act
• Delivering consistent service across all channels

Let’s look at these strategies in more detail.

Actively collect and act on customer feedback

The most straightforward way to gather customer feedback is through surveys, reviews, and direct conversations.

However, this approach can only capture surface-level insights and might miss critical moments where customers face friction. It also tends to gather feedback only from the most engaged customers, while others may go unheard.

To get a fuller picture of customer needs and pain points, map out every interaction customers have with your business. Embed feedback collection into key moments throughout the customer journey, including during onboarding, after a support call, or even after interacting with self-service tools.

For example, Canva has built automated, in-app surveys that pop up after you download a design:

At that point, the customer’s experience is fresh, making them more likely to give relevant feedback.

Support pages are the perfect place to gather feedback. While your customers are actively engaged in troubleshooting or seeking help, they’ll share specific feedback about what you can improve.

Here’s an example of how Zapier collects customer feedback on its support pages:

Once you collect feedback, review it regularly in team meetings to identify key themes. Prioritize actionable insights, assign tasks to relevant teams, and set clear KPIs to track the impact of any changes made based on the feedback.

💡 Pro tip: After acting on customer feedback, track key metrics like customer satisfaction rates, improvements in your Net Promoter Score, and reduced support requests to ensure you’re making progress.

2. Personalize the customer experience

According to McKinsey’s Next in Personalization report, 71% of customers expect brands to offer personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when those expectations aren’t met.

In addition to improving CX, personalization can also boost your bottom line. The same McKinsey study found that companies that excel at personalization see a 40% higher revenue compared to companies that don’t focus on it as much.

Use your CRM or customer analytics solution to study your customers’ behaviors, preferences, and past interactions. Then, use your findings to create detailed customer segments.

💡 Pro tip: Look beyond demographics and segment your customers based on buying habits, product usage, and engagement patterns. For example, if a customer frequently buys on promotion, segment them differently from a high-spending customer who prioritizes premium services.

Then, use these segments to develop your customer-centric strategy. Tailor interactions, product recommendations, and customer support based on each segment’s unique needs.

For example, if you have a segment of customers that tends to make one-off purchases, consider designing personalized post-purchase follow-ups that offer complementary products or services based on their specific buying history.

3. Practice proactive problem-solving

Anticipating and addressing customer needs or potential issues before they arise shows people you’re invested in their experience and satisfaction, not their money. This can boost customer lifetime value and reduce churn. By showing commitment to customers’ needs, you can build a loyal customer base.

Let’s say a SaaS company offers project management software. During onboarding, they notice that a significant number of customers struggle with setting up custom workflows — a key feature that’s essential for long-term use of the product.

A reactive company would wait for customers to contact support. This can lead to frustration and delayed adoption of the tool.

A proactive, customer-focused company would identify the issue through usage data and send personalized onboarding emails to customers who haven’t configured workflows within a certain period, offering a step-by-step guide tailored to the customer’s industry.

They might even trigger an in-app pop-up the next time the customer logs in, offering a quick setup wizard or scheduling a one-on-one session with a support specialist to walk them through it.

Here’s an example from Onboarding Study:

To get started, gather and analyze customer data throughout the entire customer journey. This includes tracking usage patterns, identifying common pain points, and regularly collecting feedback.

Once you’ve identified potential issues, implement automated triggers that offer personalized solutions. This could be through emails, in-app messages, or pop-ups tailored to specific customer behaviors.

4. Empower employees to act

When employees have the autonomy to solve customer problems on the spot, the focus shifts from rigid internal processes to meeting customer needs in real time.

This initiative shows that your company values customer satisfaction and is committed to delivering personalized solutions — not just following scripts. It creates a more flexible, customer-first experience, allowing for faster resolutions and building stronger, trust-based relationships.

Start by equipping your people with comprehensive customer insights so they can understand each customer’s history, preferences, and pain points. A unified analytics platform could help with this.

For example, here’s how Nextiva’s customer analytics software aggregates customer data all in one place:

Next, create clear guidelines for when your employees can offer tailored solutions, like issuing refunds, offering personalized discounts, or following up after a resolved issue — without needing to escalate to a manager.

Regularly provide training that focuses on empathy, problem-solving, and how to leverage available tools effectively.

5. Deliver consistent service across all channels

Delivering consistent service across all channels (also known as omnichannel customer service) creates a seamless experience for customers, no matter how they choose to interact.

It prioritizes their convenience, ensuring they don’t have to repeat themselves or deal with different systems.

One way to ensure consistent service across channels is to invest in omnichannel customer service software or a centralized CRM. This tool should track interactions and merge behavior, preferences, purchase history, and feedback from all channels.

That way, any customer-facing employee can instantly access the full customer profile and provide tailored support regardless of where the interaction takes place.

Additionally, train all customer-facing teams on the same guidelines, processes, and tone of voice. Whether it’s in-person, over the phone, or on social media, everyone should follow the same service principles.

💡 Pro tip: Don’t keep staff restricted to single channels. Cross-train customer service teams to handle inquiries across multiple platforms. That way, they can offer a more fluid experience if a customer’s issue needs to move from one channel to another (like from social media to email).

How Contact Center Platforms Help With Customer Centricity

Without a contact center platform, teams would struggle to provide consistent service across channels, solve customer problems quickly, and meet customer expectations.

Let’s say a customer calls to ask about their order status. But when they later follow up via live chat, the agent has no record of the phone call.

Without a complete view of the customer’s journey, the issue drags on, leaving the customer frustrated by the lack of coordination and inconsistent information.

Here’s how contact center software helps you avoid problems like that:

Centralizes your customer data

A cloud-based contact center platform centralizes data, giving your team members instant access to every customer interaction, from order history to past support tickets. This eliminates the guesswork when dealing with customers and makes your reps’ lives easier.

For example, when a customer calls about a billing issue, the agent can see previous emails, chats, or calls related to the problem. Instead of playing catch-up, they can jump straight to offering a solution, making the experience smoother and more personalized.

With this kind of real-time access, you can provide faster, more accurate responses, showing customers that you understand their needs and that their time is valued. This creates a good customer experience, which can encourage more repeat business.

Lets you provide omnichannel support

Your customers interact with brands across various platforms. Some prefer a quick text message, others like an email, and many still value a good old-fashioned phone call.

An omnichannel contact center platform lets your team keep up by integrating every touchpoint into one place. No more juggling separate platforms, losing track of what’s been said, or dealing with agents contradicting each other.

Instead, your team has all the context they need, no matter how a customer reaches out.

Picture this: A customer starts a live chat because they’re confused about a recent charge. After a back-and-forth, they don’t have time to finish, so they send an email the next day.

Without an omnichannel platform, your agent would need to dig through old chats or ask the customer to explain the issue again.

But, with a unified system, the email automatically pulls in the customer’s chat history. Your agent picks up exactly where the last conversation left off, making the whole interaction seamless for the customer.

That’s how omnichannel support builds trust — it shows customers you’re paying attention and putting their experience first.

Enables automated call routing and prioritization

Ever had to call your internet service provider to fix an issue, only to be bounced from one department to another, repeating your problem over and over? We’ve all been there.

Automated call routing fixes that by getting customers to the right agent immediately, based on their issue, history, and even priority level.

This means quicker resolutions and less frustration on both sides.

For example, a VIP customer calls about an ongoing service issue. With automated routing, they’re prioritized and sent straight to a senior specialist already familiar with their case. This saves time for both your team and the customer and makes the customer feel valued.

By streamlining how calls are handled, your team can focus on solving problems, not managing logistics.

Provides AI-powered insights

Top contact center platforms (like Nextiva) use AI to reveal patterns in customer behavior that would otherwise go unnoticed.

These insights help you spot trends, identify recurring issues, and predict customer needs before they arise. This means your team can move from being reactive to proactive, solving problems before they escalate.

Imagine customers reaching out multiple times over a month with seemingly unrelated questions about a product.

While these issues might appear isolated to your agents, AI spots a pattern that shows customers are struggling with the setup process. With this insight, your team can proactively offer better onboarding or send targeted support emails before frustration leads to churn.

Lets you engage with customers proactively

Contact center software helps you stay ahead of customer needs by automating outreach. Instead of waiting for customers to contact you with issues, the system can automatically send updates or solutions based on their activity.

For example, you can set up the platform so that if a customer’s order is delayed, it sends the customer a notification with an updated delivery date and even a discount for their next purchase.

This keeps the customer in the loop and makes it easier for your team to engage them in the right moments before issues escalate.

Build a Customer-Centric Culture With Nextiva

Customer centricity means shaping every decision around what’s best for the customer, building loyalty through consistent value and trust — not just aiming for quick sales.

But it’s hard to stay proactive and responsive without a dedicated contact center platform.

Some of the best customer-centric brands, like IKEA, DHL, and Amazon, use Nextiva to unify their customer interactions and deliver seamless service. But you don’t have to be a global giant to benefit from our platform.

Nextiva’s AI-powered contact center solution helps small businesses anticipate customer needs by automating tasks like intelligent call routing, sentiment analysis, and proactive customer outreach.

This lets your team anticipate issues before they arise, improve response times, and deliver personalized service that builds long-term loyalty — no matter the size of your business.

Engage on every channel with Nextiva’s customer experience platform. 👇