In an ever-evolving marketplace—particularly one adjusting to a global pandemic—customer-centricity is almost as difficult to define as it is to achieve. Does it mean prioritizing customer service? Products? Customer experience?

Customer-centricity is defined by all these things, and what we do know is that it’s important. A recent Salesforce research report shows that 80% of respondents believe that the experience a company provides is just as important as its products and services.

Forging a positive consumer experience by maximizing product offerings and service while nurturing the relationship is as much art as science, but there is now a data-driven formula to help brands better understand the puzzle and devise solutions to unite around their customers. The Customer Centricity Index—created by Bloomberg Media in collaboration with Salesforce—is an objective ranking that identifies the brands most successful in putting their customers first.

“The pandemic has not only changed the way we live and work, it has redefined expectations for every brand worldwide,” says Cristina Jones, Senior Vice President of Customer Marketing, Brand Partnerships and C-Suite Engagement at Salesforce. “In this new normal, customer-centricity will be a key differentiator for every organization, no matter its size or industry.”

Leveraging the Bloomberg Brand Health System, a proprietary, independent survey, the Customer Centricity Index draws on insights from the C-suite. The index, based on the brand perceptions of more than 1,500 executives, ranks the top 100 customer-centric companies in five sectors—Financial Services, Retail, Communications, Health and Manufacturing.

Each brand is judged across six Success Factors—key attributes that are comprehensive cross-industry benchmarks:

Anticipating customer needs
Delivering exceptional customer service
Caring about customers
Offering relevant products and services
Being easy to do business with
Being honest with the public

Each of these Success Factors is accorded a statistical importance, and a factor analysis process calculates a Customer Centricity score for each brand.

“Factor analysis looks to reduce a large data set to a more manageable and understandable set of underlying factors or patterns by grouping together variables that are highly correlated to each other,” says Michelle Lynn, Global Head of Data Science and Insights at Bloomberg Media. “For example, brand ratings for ‘dependable,’ ‘reliable’ and ‘tried and true’ are typically highly correlated, with an underlying factor that could be labeled ‘trustworthy.’”

The Hershey Company wrapped up the sweet spot as the No. 1-ranked brand in the index, with consistent performance across every attribute, including a perfect score for its reputation of being honest with the public. Hershey also scored fifth overall for delivering relevant products and services, suggesting that the company’s strong assortment of chocolate and candy offerings pairs well with recent acquisitions in the savory snack category.

Detailed index data reveals how other brands maximize their strengths to build customer-led organizations:

AT&T scored high in anticipating customer needs thanks to its live 5G network, the development of FirstNet for first responders and its acquisition of Warner Media.

Humana’s mission to simplify healthcare and enable collaboration makes it a clear Health winner for being easy to work with, ranking an impressive third among all brands in that Success Factor.

In Retail, Starbucks’ commitment to ethical sourcing and prioritizing social impact earned kudos for being honest with the public, while Unilever performs well in offering relevant products and services—its sustainable, accessible goods that are indispensable to its customers.

Across all Success Factors, at least one brand per industry scored in the top 15 for each attribute—evidence that any brand can outperform its category average. Unsurprisingly, the Customer Centricity Index shows that B2C brands perform better on most measures because respondents usually experience them more often in their personal lives, with the Communications and Retail sectors scoring higher, on average, across all six metrics than, for example, Manufacturing. The effect of this familiarity is also evident in industry scores by Success Factor. Communications and Retail also fared best in offering relevant products and services, followed by Health.

The data for each industry sector shows that a strong reputation for customer-centricity is not dependent on consistent performance across all Success Factors, and can be achieved by excelling in a particular area. For example, the rise of digital banking and fintech has led to Financial Services brands receiving the highest average scores for being easy to do business with, which offset their lower average grades in the cares about customers metric. Similarly, Retail brands scored well for offering relevant products and services, but not as well in anticipating customer needs.

What emerges from the wealth of data underpinning the Customer Centricity Index is how these high-performing brands have navigated individual paths to being customer-led, whether by focusing on core corporate values, product offerings or enhanced service strategies. According to Jones, the insights provided by the index offer a roadmap to help guide other brands to achieve the same success.

“By illustrating how some of the world’s top companies are rethinking their purpose, growth strategy and customer engagement,” she says, “we hope to create a blueprint for other brands to follow.”

Learn more about customer-centricity from Salesforce.

The Customer Centricity Index and Customer Centricity score is not an endorsement from either Salesforce or Bloomberg Media of any brands or companies in the index and does not constitute independent editorial content from Bloomberg Media or Bloomberg L.P.

Identifying Today’s Most Customer-Centric Companies