Customer Orientation: Definition, Examples & Strategies

That’s why so much of being customer-oriented is about becoming customer service-oriented. A customer orientation mindset isn’t going to do anything for your business unless it extends to your customer service. With a welcoming company culture guided by the brand’s vision, mission, and values, 85 percent of surveyed Dell employees expressed happiness in their roles. This creates a domino effect as it inspires them to advocate for the brand and even be proactive by participating in social media campaigns and brand advertising efforts. The company has spearheaded programs that empower women, people of color, LGBTQ+ members, veterans, and people with disabilities. Dell also has programs that create a safe and open environment where biases are eliminated by educating its workforce and consumers about social issues.

In fact, most modern businesses will have their own approach to business that might combine ideas from each approach, or take another one altogether. Mercer is the VP of CX Insights & Community at PartnerHero, a yoga fanatic, and strives to make the world a little bit happier one customer at a time. No matter how much you already know about your customers and how many questions you’ve asked, each new customer is an opportunity to learn more. Every person is unique and has individual wants and needs, and your customers are no different. This level of care and attention to detail is represented nowhere better than in their interview process. Teams using Help Scout are set up in minutes, twice as productive, and save up to 80% in annual support costs.

Understanding Marketing Orientation

Now that you have an idea of where well-rounded brand building can lead you, let’s take a look at some of the simple yet impactful steps you can implement to become a brand oriented company. Its business model then evolved, integrating changes based on what consumers are looking for while maintaining its mission of bringing the best and affordable entertainment experience. Taking it up a notch, Netflix grew its digital presence, with members rating and reviewing movies on its website, which increased engagement within the community.

A marketing-oriented company understands the needs and wants of its target market and tailors its products or services to meet those needs. In other words, a marketing-oriented company leans heavily toward a strong customer-centric business model. Market orientation business orientation meaning is a business philosophy where the focus is on identifying customer needs or wants and meeting them. When a company has a market orientation approach, it focuses on designing and selling goods and services that satisfy customer needs in order to be profitable.

Five Principles of Enlightened Marketing

The retail giant is well-known for creating positive customer experiences. And yet… so many businesses still put the needs and wants of the company over what’s best for the customer. Unlock your business potential with our committed team driving your success. Finally, managers and business leaders should be strong proponents of inclusivity and diversity in the workplace where different perspectives, ideas, and opinions are welcomed. Doing so encourages your team—including decision-makers— to be more collaborative, which can contribute to increased productivity and makes way for strategic decisions.

• In order to remain competitive, companies must follow the market orientation approach religiously.
• Job applicants are carefully screened to make sure they fit the restructured image, workers become involved in activities that remind them of the company’s process of cultural change.
• Business process orientation has also led to successes when applied to medium and small scale business that is properly setup.
• This is often a short-term solution for businesses – thus the relationships sought in all the other strategies are ignored.

Inter-functional Co-Ordination is highly effective in creating value for target customers using the resources of the organisation. As pointed out by Ozkaya et al., (2015), Interfunctional Co-Ordination might be the most essential component of Marketing Orientation as it directly focuses on the internal system of the organisation. While a firm can use various marketing methods, they must align with the company and product goals, structure, and capabilities. Business people can pick between market orientation, product orientation, and sales orientation with the support of business strategists.

Customer orientation: definition, examples & skills

One thing’s for certain, today’s age of digital transformation and a global shift towards remote work have changed the way businesses do sales, customer service, and marketing, amongst many other processes. The way you run your business depends on how your organisation operates, the products or services it offers, its challenges, and the philosophies that you adhere to. They can innovate with new technologies to address customer needs—even if they are unknown—and generate market demand.

The best customer-oriented teams default to taking on the onus of a problem or challenge rather than passing it back to the customer. If your customer needs a problem fixed, just do it for them, and reduce the effort your customer has to expend. While many people are under the incorrect assumption that to do well in support you just have to be kind, there are tons of essential skills to being an excellent support team member. To understand how they had to shift and where their customers found the most value, the company had to dive deep. They started losing out to more creative and flexible brands, like Apple, which understood more about what the end-user was doing with the machine. Rather than being prescriptive, they conducted an extensive study around business use cases and how they pertained to changing customer needs.

Monitor social media feedback

Marketing is more than just communicating information about products and services. Marketing-oriented companies understand their customers’ needs, recognize opportunities in the market, and share the message about products and services. Marketing-oriented companies start marketing research long before a product or service is ever released.

The retailer’s core value is to always try to wow their customers and has a unique way of tracking it. Their call center has a board with “flower stats” that tracks small gifts sent out to customers. Chisel provides a quick and easy way to conduct product feedback surveys. The pre-built survey templates from our library can be customized to suit your needs. Job applicants are carefully screened to make sure they fit the restructured image, workers become involved in activities that remind them of the company’s process of cultural change.