Organisations that are truly focused on customers subsequently deliver great customer service and exceptional customer experiences. They also continue to improve these experiences and achieve benefits such as strong sales, great brand advocacy and strong reputations.

These organisations are described as being anything from “customer-centric” to having a “customer-first culture” to even being “customer-obsessed”. For convenience, we’ll use the term “customer-centric” in this post. While it is all too easy to enter the world of buzzwords, customer-centric organisations usually have in place:

• A strategy that prioritises customer experience and ensures the structures and approaches are in place to make it happen
• Training and reward structures that equip and incentivise employees to deliver great customer service
• Processes in place that enable continued improvement, often using metrics, data and customer feedback
• An organisational culture that celebrates customer-centric approaches and encourages the right mindset
• A real attention to detail when it comes to dealing with customers
• A focus on retaining existing customers as much as attracting new ones.

Customer-centric means committing to digital accessibility

Any truly customer-centric organisation needs to have a strong commitment to digital accessibility. If your digital channels are not accessible you are not being focused on the needs of your customers.

There are very clear statistics that show that people with accessibility issues make up a significant proportion of any organisation’s customer base. Nearly one fifth of working age adults and 44% of pension-age adults in the UK have a disability of one sort or another. In the US around 1 in 4 adults are disabled.

Any customer-centric organisation clearly needs to consider the requirements of all customers, and that includes those with disabilities.

Committing to digital accessibility for commercial reasons and efficiency

Organisations don’t commit to being customer-centric because it’s a nice thing to do. Businesses do so for solid, commercial reasons.  Public sector organisations that are customer-centric do so because it is part of their responsibility and remit to deliver services and information to the public.

Of course, while there is an ethical and legal dimension to committing to digital and web accessibility, making sure accessibility is covered by any customer-centric approach also aligns with the real-world priorities of organisations.

Commercially, web accessibility makes absolute sense. As again the numbers show, the collective spending power of people with disabilities is enormous, with the “Purple Pound” estimated to be around £274 billion in the UK. Inaccessible websites also lead to an estimated lost revenue of £17.1 billon pounds per year in the UK.

For public sector organisations, ensuring digital channels are truly accessible means a far more effective and efficient dissemination of information and delivery of digital services.

Aligning customer-centric approaches with digital accessibility

There will be many organisations who pride themselves on having a customer-centric approach but still have considerable room for improvement when it comes to digital accessibility. It’s never too late to start and there are tactics that can help ensure digital accessibility is recognised as part of your customer-centric approach.

1. Prioritise making your digital channels more accessible

   It might sound obvious, but the most important thing that digital teams can do inside customer-centric organisations is to prioritise making their website and digital channels accessible and initiate a project or approach to make this happen.

   We’ve written numerous times about the kind of steps digital teams need to carry out. When progress has been made, celebrating this achievement and presenting this as an example of a customer-centric approach will help to drive awareness, buy-in and future commitment.

2. Drive awareness in customer-facing staff

   If you have made progress in making your channels accessible, you then have a stronger baseline to start efforts to drive more awareness of the importance of accessibility to both digital and customer-facing staff; this can help establish a culture of accessibility that aligns with a culture of customer service.  

   Tactics such as ensuring there are opportunities for staff to learn about accessibility can be part of this effort.

3. Get the right analytics in

   Customer-centric organisations habitually use analytics and data to drive continuous improvement of customer experiences. Having tools to measure digital accessibility and treating these as important as other metrics will help to achieve and maintain web accessibility; here a platform like Sitemorse can help.

4. Actively involve disabled customers in improving customer service

   Making sure disabled customers are actively involved in giving feedback about your digital channels can galvanise teams and stakeholders into action, and gives you invaluable detail to prioritise improvements that matter. For example, you could involve disabled customers in a Voice of the Customer programme.  

Associating accessibility with customer experience

If you’re not making your digital experiences accessible, then you’re not being customer-centric. A combination of action, data and awareness will help customer-facing teams associate customer service with accessibility. In turn, this will help ensure a sustained focus on accessibility.