The dos and don'ts of customer-centric sustainability

In CX Network's Global State of Customer Experience 2021 report, 80 per cent of those surveyed agreed that customers are becoming more conscious of sustainability. Here, we explore the dos and don'ts of introducing sustainable business practices.

Do: evaluate business practices using an environmentalist perspective

By looking at business practices through an environmentalist lens, brands can ensure they take steps that will make a real, positive impact on the environment.

Joshua Tye, senior customer operations leader at Cash App, explains: “A socially responsible organization empathetically evaluates customer’s decisions. The most responsible teams leverage diversity and environmentalist perspectives to elevate consumer outcomes." 

Do not: Be inauthentic with your efforts

If you fail to engage with customers in the correct way surrounding your sustainable business practices, you can risk your brand's reputation. Being inauthentic can lead customers believing your company to be opportunistic rather than sincere.

If customers believe a brand's efforts to be 'greenwashing', the name given to superficial sustainable practices used as a marketing ploy rather than an effort towards change, the company risks losing both their loyalty and their business.

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Do: Engage customers in your sustainability efforts

By integrating sustainability into customer communication strategies this allows your company to re-engage customers with your environmental efforts. This could be through providing customers with data about how their purchases positively contribute to sustainability efforts, or by being transparent with what measures your brand is taking to reduce the negative effects it may have on the environment.

Do not: neglect customer-centric sustainable business practices in favor of other priorities

It is becoming clear that customers want to buy products from companies that they believe contribute to positive social change, and so companies must meet this need or risk losing customers. By introducing customer-centric socially responsible measures, brands can leverage the customer insights discovered from these practices to form customer engagement hubs and build long term loyalty from customers.

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