Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization Requires Diligence

The concept of becoming a customer-centric organization has been around for decades. Research continues to demonstrate the impact that customer experience has on the bottom line and that customer-centric organizations are more successful as measured by repeat customers, new business, customer engagement and overall profitability. Customer-centricity is about putting the customer at the center of everything an organization does and according to Harvard Business Review, enhancing the customer experience is the new competitive battleground. In order to function as a customer-centric organization, the customer’s needs must be fully understood. Yet, according to PwC, only 38% of U.S. consumers say the employees they interact with understand their needs. For many companies this is a daunting task in that the volume and variety of data that exists about our customers is overwhelming. Some companies don’t have the systems and technology to segment and profile customers, and others lack the processes and operational capabilities to target them with personalized communications and experiences. Recent articles in Harvard Business Review, HubType and Optimove identify a common set of areas to focus on when serious about building a customer-centric organization.

They include:
1. Developing a customer-centric organizational culture.
2. Systems for easily sharing customer data.
3. Flexible technology in order to be able to make rapid changes.
4. Design all products and services with data collection in mind.
Over my next several blogs, I intend to review these areas of focus and discuss some interesting strategies being tested by companies across the globe beginning with the development of a customer-centric culture.

#1 Develop a customer-centric organizational culture.
Essentially, company leaders must strive to develop customer empathy across the organization, stressing the importance of understanding customers’ needs and respond to those needs rapidly, effectively and appropriately. In the book The Customer Culture Imperative by Linden and Christopher Brown, the authors stress that focusing on real value for customers is often talked about by company leaders, but only sincerely acted on by a few. They go on to stress that in order to successfully implement a customer-centric culture, a company must operationalize customer empathy and to not do so is to “lack an understanding of the economics behind customer centricity. Fundamentally, customer centricity is about ensuring the financial sustainability of the organization.” Here are some ideas that are being tested to enhance the customer-centricity of companies:

Ensure Staff Know the Customer Experience. Slack, the business communication software company is doing just that. Employees are required to spend a lot of time reading customer messages, surveys and observing customers to try to better understand what they need. Teams are charged with detailing the customer journey, creating a clear picture of their consumers, their needs and where true customer-centricity may fall apart in their organizational structure.
Hire for customer orientation. From the very first interaction with prospective employees, organizations should make thinking about customers and their needs a clear priority. At Hootsuite, the social media management platform, marketing and human resources executives collaborate to do this. During the interview process, hiring managers are required to ask every candidate, regardless of role, a question to gauge their customer orientation. According to Kirsty Traill, the company’s then-VP Customer, “this practice not only assesses candidates and ensures that every new employee is aligned to customer-centric thinking, but also sends a clear message to everyone — recruits and hiring managers alike — about the importance of customer experience at the company.”
Facilitate direct interaction with customers. Companies need to develop ways for employees to interact with customers directly, even in “back office” functions. Every employee impacts the customer experience in some way, even if indirectly, so every employee can benefit from interacting with customers to better understand them and learn about their successes and challenges. Airbnb considers hosts, the people who rent out their homes, to be customers, so it facilitates employee-host interactions by requiring employees to stay in Airbnb rentals whenever they travel for business.
Link employee engagement to customer outcomes.According to Diane Gherson, now retired as head of HR at IBM, employee engagement drives two-thirds of the company’s client experience scores. In other words, the more employees feel good about IBM, feel engaged in the company’s mission and direction—the better the customer experience.

Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization Requires Diligence

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