Middle Eastern Retail and Service Industry Could Hit it Big Time With Emotional Currency

Once regarded as a profitable strategy, the ‘Customer-Centric Approach’ is now essentially becoming a survival tool for business, mainly for retail and service industry, states the strategy consultancy management 2000 (M 2000). Given the incredible growth of the GCC retail industry, which is surmised to reach US $-270.3 billion by the end of 2016, Customer-Centric growth initiatives were specified as one of the three investment priorities in 2013 CEO survey.

As much as the companies realize the significance of customer-centricity in driving profits and growth, they must also understand that emotions, feelings and meaningful engagement are the crux of great customer experience. Keeping such experiences consistently up would lead to customer loyalty and evangelism. “Delivering memorable customer experiences today can go a long way towards creating emotional currency, which in turn translates into valuable financial currency,” said Bob Gappa, Founder and CEO of Management 2000.

A survey by PWC shows that 90% of US companies have already taken the plunge to devise and strengthen customer and client engagement programs and are constantly investing and prioritizing to create customer-centric culture at organizations. However, latest studies show that customer-centricity would never succeed unless it’s deeply rooted in every facet of organizations. Numerical assessment of customer-centric development was found to be an eminent feature of the most successful systems. Apart from emotional intelligence, the customer-centric approach also involves empowerment of front line employees, who frequently interact with customers, and also giving them the ownership of the customer experience. “Creating a customer centric culture requires investment and commitment on the part of the leadership. Getting it right means delivering meaningful experiences both for employees and customers, resulting in employees who believe your company is a great place to work and customers who believe your business is a great place to spend money,” said Hussein Murad, Managing Director for Management 2000 in the Middle East.