Recap: Day Two of CommBank SmallBiz Week 2023

By day two of CommBank SmallBiz Week 2023, it was clear that cybersecurity and cost-of-living concerns are the key issues for small business owners in post-pandemic Australia.

But eager entrepreneurs also turned up en masse to learn about how customer-centricity, sustainability, and digital payments can drive profitability and support cash flow.

Get the edge through customer obsession

At two separate panels on the benefits of customer-centricity, an impressive collection of industry heavyweights explained how being “customer obsessed” can give small businesses a competitive edge.

In one, Sara Sutton, GM of Small Business at CommBank, said that “customer-centricity” is really just about “understanding your customers deeply”. And that it can set your business apart by helping personalise your product or service to your target market’s specific wants and needs.

This approach takes a time investment, and means caring, having empathy, and walking in your customer’s shoes. But the pay-off—improved customer acquisition and retention rates—speaks for itself.

Of course, Salesforce’s Bree Petherbridge had the data to back all this up. Her company found that “88% of consumers now say the experience a company provides is as important as their product or services—up from 80% in 2020.”

Top tools for customer-centricity

In a separate discussion on the same topic, panellists were asked for their top tools to support customer-centricity. Responses included Askable, which one panellist said can be a very cheap way to access different groups of consumers for face-to-face and qualitative online surveys.

Another panellist said quick post-purchase surveys are key—and that asking questions such as “Why did you purchase from us?”, and, “Where did you hear about us?” can be particularly helpful.

Meanwhile, for William Mailer, chief behavioural scientist at CommBank, experimentation is a must. Big initiatives that feel like they should work for customers sometimes don’t, he explained, and can even misfire or backfire.

“Experimentation is a tool we use a lot in evaluating different initiatives and challenging our intuition,” he said. “A lot of businesses are too quick to implement things that feel right but don’t work the way we thought they should.”

One last word on this topic: don’t be afraid to really dig into bad feedback. As one panellist pointed out, “If you have a customer with a problem you can fix, they might walk away with an even better experience than if nothing had gone wrong in the first place.”

Sustainability can open doors and save cash

A panel on sustainability revealed the hidden value for SMBs in focusing on sustainability. According to one industry expert, consumers are increasingly considering the sustainability of the product or service they’re buying, as well as the overall sustainability of the business, and the way they treat their employees.

Being able to demonstrate solid environmental, social, and governance (ESG) credentials could also help you secure contracts with big businesses, both nationally and internationally, as they place more scrutiny on supply chains. So, “It’s really about future-proofing your business strategically and operationally,” a panellist said.

For those fretting about the costs involved, CommBank’s Sustainability Action Tool can help you explore ways to reduce your impact on the environment—and save money in the process. You might also want to look into how your waste could be used by others, circular-economy style. For example, La Porchetta got its old oil picked up and repurposed, and even got paid for it.

Managing margins amid rising costs

The cost of living (and doing business) is obviously a hot topic at the moment. But some good news to come out of last Thursday’s sessions was that we can expect to see shipping costs come down, while a loosening job market—driven by higher-than-expected overseas migration—should help ease wage-growth pressure. There is even a chance of RBA rate cuts before the year is out.

If you do need to shave costs, the first step is a simple one: really get to know your margins, where you’re making money, and where you’re not. In the constant cut-and-thrust of doing business, this is something SMBs can easily lose sight of, Sutton said. (She recommended CommBank’s Cash Flow Management Tool for help with this.)

Explore whether your suppliers can help you cut costs, and if you do need to increase prices, make sure you know who can handle it. It’s all about “knowing your customers, and your competitors”, Sutton said.

Finally, e-invoicing and digital payments are real game-changers when it comes to improving cash flow. This area of emerging tech, might even spell the end of entire days spent invoicing, reconciling and chasing payments each month. Wouldn’t that be a weight off?

For more information to support your small business visit commbank.com.au/smallbusiness

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