Category Archives: Trust

Is it possible to compete with Amazon and win?

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For businesses everywhere, this is becoming an increasingly relevant question.

Not long ago most business could just ignore Amazon and say to themselves that’s fine for them in retail they are not operating in our industry.

Well, times are changing, and Amazon is competing in not only retail but consumer electronics, entertainment, enterprise cloud services and is eyeing opportunities in healthcare and payments.

The question for all businesses to ask themselves is how would we respond if Amazon entered my marketplace?

Well, one company did not have to wonder for too long, in fact, they have been competing with them for the past 10 plus years. With the rise of Amazon, many analysts predicted the demise of Best Buy, the US brick and mortar retailer.

So how to Best Buy fight back? They applied the same approach as Amazon – customer obsession.

In fact, under the new CEO, Hubert Joly, they undertook a transformation from a transactional retailer focused on store traffic and closing sales to one focused on building customer relationships for life.

Where does a customer-obsessed transformation start?

It begins with your customers and employees when a business is under attack as Best Buy was around 2009, a new vision and purpose for the business’s future needs to be articulated.

Joly launched a turnaround plan called “Renew Blue” in 2012 that was designed to address all critical stakeholders in the business beginning with customers.

To gain insights on what was happening at the frontlines, Joly spent a week working in a store and talking with employees. They told him the website sucked, it was slow and difficult to navigate, and the employee discount had been reduced recently by previous management. They also described how customers were “showrooming” coming in to see products then buy them somewhere else online.

Joly began with some quick wins, restoring the employee discount and taking price off the table by guaranteeing to match online prices.

This showed he was listening and more importantly acting on feedback, a critical trait for a customer-obsessed leader.

He then focused on customer experience, redoing the website, investing in search and matching Amazon on free fast shipping.

By focusing on their unique strengths, the in-store personal experience, they have been able to focus and start winning again.

Joly shifted the employee mindset by instilling a new purpose. In his words “we’re not in the business of selling products or doing transactions, we have our purpose, which is to enrich lives with the help of technology.”

“We don’t see ourselves as a bricks-and-mortar retailer. We are company obsessed about the customer and in serving them in a way that truly solves their unique problems.”

What does this mean in practice?

For Best Buy that means introducing new service offerings such as the “in-home Advisor” which involves best buy employees going to people’s homes for free and providing expert advice on how to better select, buy and install technology to enhance their lives.

A second example is “Total tech support” which involved Best buy taking ownership of any technical problem in the home and fixing it, all for $200 a year.

The third example of their innovation is a focus on aging seniors with an emphasis on helping them stay in their homes independently for longer. Through the smart deployment of technology they can detect if something is wrong and people need help, they can then intervene to make sure people get the help they need.

Customer-obsessed Leadership

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Customer-obsessed leaders don’t just say they are focused on customers they act on it and make decisions with a customer lens every day.

A great example is Best Buy’s relationship with Amazon, although fierce competitors on many fronts, they also see opportunities to collaborate and work together because it is the right thing for their customers.

“A lot of other retailers have been reluctant to sell their products. The reason we’ve sold their products is because we’re customer-driven.” says Joly.

In fact, recently Amazon chose to launch its Fire TV Smart TVs exclusively through Best Buy.

“Every management meeting we have, we don’t start with the financial results. We start with people. Then we talk about the customers, and last we talk about the financial results”

 “I don’t believe that the purpose of a company is to make money. It’s an imperative. It’s a necessity. But it’s not the purpose”

Hubert Joly

 

The turnaround strategy with its reinvigorated purpose and customer obsession around enriching people’s lives through technology are paying off. The ship has turned, and the future looks bright for this retailer once thought to be following Circuit City into bankruptcy.

How can you instill a customer-obsessed culture in your business? It starts by understanding your current culture and charting a path based on purpose, people and delivering great customer experiences.

Sources:

http://tcbmag.com/honors/articles/2018/2018-person-of-the-year-hubert-joly

https://www.cmo.com.au/article/659314/how-best-buy-shifted-from-being-retail-led-customer-relationship-driven/

 

A Customer-Obsessed Culture is like employee engagement on steroids

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Can you imagine a business where everyone connects with its true purpose and gives the very best of himself or herself every day to deliver on that purpose?

What an awesome place that would be to work! And wouldn’t you love to be their customer!

Unfortunately, there are only a few organizations like this in the world today. However, the good news is that many more companies are actually aspiring to be that way.

I don’t care what business you are in; you must foster a new operating model to be successful in today’s business environment.

What makes it different?

The old school autocratic, all-knowing CEO is out, the age of talented teams focused on customers is here.

We call this customer culture, an environment where teams of people work together to deliver unique, valuable customer experiences.

The evidence for the need to create this type of culture is everywhere, all around us.

Nowhere to hide.

Companies can no longer brush poor customer experiences under the carpet, there is a large and vocal customer constituency that will voice their opinions and these will influence whether or not others are interested in your products and services.

Purpose matters.

The days of people turning up for work for a paycheck then turning off is gone. If you spend more than half of your living hours working it had better be for more than just a paycheck.

More than ever before younger workers are looking for meaning in their work, why am I doing this? Where is the meaning?

Customers want to know why you do what you do.

Simon Sinek has recognized that consumers today care about why you do what you do as much as what your offer. If you are just in business to make money for shareholders, I think you will find it a tough environment to compete in. Do something to improve my life, the life of our community, the world or the environment…

Employee Engagement is not enough.

While employee engagement is important, it is simply not enough.

For organizations to succeed they need engaged employees that are directing that energy and passion towards solving problems for their customers.

In fact, we have found engaged employees are the result of good leadership (fair consistent, transparent, inspirational), a strong culture and people doing meaningful work for their customers.

You can’t make someone engaged in their work but you can create the environment (culture) where it is much more likely to happen.

Your call to action:

For 10 years MarketCulture has helped leaders around the world understand how to engage employees in building a customer-obsessed culture. The MRI Assessment provides valuable feedback to leaders that they can act on to enable employees to deliver great customer experiences.

MarketCulture has proven scientifically that a stronger customer culture will drive increased business performance through retention of customers and increased advocacy.

Find out how to help your company become more customer obsessed  in our MarketCulture Academy.

Why being customer obsessed pays! Lessons from the CEO of massively successful startup Naked Wines

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Luke Jecks, the Former CEO of Naked Wines, founded and led an online wine business that operates in the US, the UK, and Australia. The company connects wine lovers with boutique wineries and uses a subscription model where “angels” – consumers who pay a monthly subscription to help fund the winery’s next vintage – are able to order their favorite wines and pay for them from their subscriptions. It is a customer-funded wine business.

I asked Luke how this came about.

He replied: “The most important thing in the wine industry is that the only way this online business could work would be if we could have consumers that were “sticky” to the business. If we could get loyalty in perpetuity we would not have to be a business that is constantly out there chasing new sales. Instead what we could do is invest in loyalty in the consumer and if we did that we would have a sustainable business.”

“So we needed a model that did not trap consumers but made them want to stay. So the questions we had to answer were: How do you reinvent the wine club and its benefits with a subscription that had no cancellation fees, had no minimum period of membership, you could walk away at any time, and any money you put into the subscription you got back?”

“We found that a segment of wine consumers need to see a choice, a benefit, a feeling of being in control and where they feel they can connect with the values of the business. We felt that to keep customers in the long term we needed to make them feel proud – because they mattered and were part of the key wine choices being made and understood their role in making the business a success and the winemakers successful. Also proud because they feel they are doing good through the stories behind the winemakers that can’t happen without them”.

I asked Luke how this relates to customer-centricity. He said: “To me, you must have an “attract” model and not a “trap” model. It is a model where the customer plays a vital part in the success. So it is important for us to measure the customer lifetime value – that is how long they stay with us and how much they spend. That is much more important than today’s transaction. We believe that if we can get loyalty, we will get sales. We tested this by sending “high engagement” emails to half our consumers and “buy” emails to the other half. It turned out that the “engagement” emails created loyalty and those consumers bought more. We asked our consumers to rate their happiness with us. We found that people who rated us 5 stars (90%-100%) had much bigger lifetime value. So we set about investing to get 90%+ ratings by putting more people in the business, paying our staff more, investing in career programs for our staff and empowering them to empower our customers.

I asked Luke what has been the result. He said:

“From a standing start 5 years ago Naked Wine now has more than 100,000 angels. But more important than this number is the high level of loyalty. This has created a growing, profitable and sustainable business.”

A truly customer obsessed business has loyal customers that buy from you because they want to – and stay with you because they see that you care and that they are important. It is a business, like Naked Wines, that invests in and empowers its people to fully engage with their customers to create great customer experiences. This translates into increasing customer lifetime value. Sustainable profit and growth follow.

Hear more from Luke in this previous post – “What is the kryptonite for disruptors?”

Learn more about creating this culture in our latest book, the Customer Culture Imperative.

Are you an obsessive member of the Secret Squirrel Club?

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“We are not members of the Secret Squirrel Club”, says Peter Cooke, President of Wright Medical International. This was in response to my question about the leader’s role in customer engagement. In a meeting last year Peter and I were talking about customer-centric leadership. He went on to say “ that in order to create alignment between leaders and our employees to do the right thing for customers we must trust them with all the information they need to create a great customer experience – don’t keep it a secret. This includes financial progress of the company and the latest innovative initiatives occurring in different parts of the world.”

Peter continues “To do this we need a depth of competence at the top with leaders that have a high willingness to collaborate. We continually communicate the 3 or 4 key themes – we call them the vital few – to all employees in the business and the leadership team stands behind these themes and cascades them throughout the company and infuses them at every level.

Customer Centric Leadership Traits - TRUST

I asked him why employees are so important and leaders must avoid falling into the trap of not sharing information and becoming a member of the ‘secret squirrel club’. Peter replies “Success in business comes about by making the customer feel special. It’s that human contact that hooks you in as a customer. That’s the essence of customer engagement. To me, people buy from people. That’s what makes a difference. That’s why we are working on strengthening our customer engagement and aligning a collaborative culture at Wright Medical International to do what’s best for the customer and show that we really care.”

When you think about it, even in this digital age, when customers have a problem they are comforted by a human voice – whether it be by phone, through a chat function on a website, or even better, a face-to-face interaction. The moments of magic for customers are ultimately created by people. This can only occur if everyone in the business is aligned with what customers need and how a great customer experience is delivered.

If it’s kept a secret – that is, information and experiences are not shared – your employees become dissatisfied and your customers and business suffer the consequences.

Learn more about why a customer-obsessed culture pays in our latest book, the Customer Culture Imperative.

…AND Learn how your can transform your company’s way of doing business in our MarketCulture Academy.

Customer Obsession: Its a Mindset! Here’s one senior leader’s take on it.

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I have known and worked with John Stanhope over many years. John had a long career with Telstra culminating as CFO. He is now Chairman of Australia Post. Ever since I have known him he has had a customer mindset. Almost an obsession!

When I spoke to him about the mindset challenges in today’s business he said: “Today the focus must be on ‘customer innovation’. Many companies focus on innovation, but it is customer innovation that counts. At Australia Post our customers want their parcels anywhere, anytime, so we ask: How can we provide a great delivery process that gets better and better over time and do it profitably? Innovation must occur to meet our customer’s need and expectation of ‘anywhere, anytime’.”

He says all leaders must have a mindset that is externally and future-focused. This includes foresight and peripheral vision with future customer needs and changes in customer behaviour as central. This is what drives customer innovation.

To develop this mindset leaders must have a relentless pursuit that everything is about the customer. John says: “There are little signs that tell you. At the start of a meeting ask – Is this about our customers? If not, don’t have the meeting. Another key sign is ‘language’.  How do you frame a problem or an issue? Is it framed in terms of the customer or not?”

I asked John how you get this mindset. He says: “ There are many factors, but I think a key one is that you must immerse yourself with customers. Ask them questions, listen to what they say, observe their behavior and then put yourself in the customer’s position. If I were the customer, what would I want to solve this problem? How would I like to be treated? That applies to anyone in a business no matter what level and what function.”

In every company that is continually successful at innovation, there are leaders and employees that have a customer obsession mindset. Like Amazon, that has developed a customer-obsessed mindset and a customer culture to match, this is required for sustainable success.

The only way to future-proof your business, your leadership or your team is with a strong adaptable, innovative customer culture.

Learn more here

This is the secret to delivering powerful Customer Experiences that only a handful of CEO’s know about!

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Why engaged customer-focused employees are vital to business success!

In today’s market, the majority of companies have very little to differentiate themselves from their competition. Their product and services are very similar if not identical. It is so easy to change to another company that it can be done in minutes or even seconds on the web. Social media can instantly let millions of people know what just took place. Customer expectations have changed and their demands are greater than ever.

Future business performance and sustainability will come down to whether or not customers continue to use your products and services or leave for an alternative supplier. It costs 7.5 times as much to gain a new customer yet the majority of companies spend their budgets on attracting new customers. What are you doing to retain your current customers?

MarketCulture’s purpose is to help companies recognize the importance of building stronger customer experiences that retain customers. We believe that inspired, engaged and empowered employees focused on customers are vital to success. It comes down to how the company delivers on its promise and ultimately it is all employees that make this happen. It takes one bad experience and you have lost a customer.

As leaders do you truly understand what your employees need in order to deliver a great customer experience? Are we telling them what to do or are we engaging them in what they believe is important? Richard Branson says that engaged and happy employees deliver superior customer experiences. Virgin enters markets where customers are dissatisfied. They quickly win a strong market share by providing great service with a touch of magic. Employees want to be part of the solution and feel that they belong. They want to be listened to and feel that their feedback contributes to the success of the business. Your employees are the ones that retain or lose your customers.

Companies today implement many tools that measure either employee engagement or customer satisfaction. They allow leaders to know whether or not they have happy/unhappy employees or satisfied/dissatisfied customers yet they rarely provide insight into how they can improve. Leaders need to understand what employees need to deliver the company’s promise and customer satisfaction.

“There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality.” Jeff Bezos – Amazon Founder and CEO

How do we engage employees to build stronger customer experiences?

Customer experience comes down to the way your company and employees behave – whether you deliver or not on your promise. It can be as simple as responding to a customer in a timely fashion or just the tone of your voice. Amazon is now one of the biggest companies, yet they have retained a strong focus on their customer experiences even as they have grown to employ more than 300,000 people. The test of a company is not when things go well but when they don’t. Customers are looking to receive the value they paid for or they will simply try an alternative supplier. Where do you start building a stronger customer experience? You can start with the customer and find out whether or not they are satisfied but that is after the event has occurred and maybe too late. Alternatively, you can start with those that create the experience – “the employee” – and find out what they need in order to be able to deliver a great customer experience.

Steve Job’s recognized this towards the end of his time as CEO of Apple when he said:

“It’s not about me, it’s about the company and it’s about the cause. It’s not about everything being dependent on me. I have to build a culture, I have to think about a successor, I have to think about setting this thing up to do well over time. And in the end, what matters is, I want Apple to be an enduring great company and prove it didn’t need me.”

How do we do it? – It is simple. Listen to your employees, find out what is important to them, engage them, act on their feedback, empower them to solve customer problems and they will deliver better customer experiences.

MarketCulture researched 100’s of companies across the globe that exhibited both customer-centric decision-making with employees empowered to deliver great customer experiences. Some of these companies included Amazon, Google, Virgin, Apple, and Ikea.

The research revealed 8 disciplines that employees act on to deliver great customer experiences. We found these disciplines used across the entire organization including all support functions. This was not evident in companies that deliver inconsistent customer experiences.

Through both quantitative and qualitative employee feedback companies are able to act on strengths and weaknesses in order to support employees in delivering superior customer experiences.

What – A unique employee assessed customer engagement measurement tool.

Where do we start? The first step is to discover what is important to the employees in order to provide a better experience for customers. To do this we need to engage the employees and gain their feedback. The Market Responsiveness Index (MRI) is a unique assessment tool that all employees, including leaders, complete. The MRI has quantitative (scaled questions/benchmarked) as well as qualitative feedback (verbatim comments). This will identify the strengths and weaknesses of your company against companies that use best customer-centric practices. This will create change and build future business performance through the retention and growth of customers. Studies have shown that companies with Customer Centric practices outperform the others.

What is the Market Responsiveness Index (MRI)?

The MRI is a web-based employee assessment, requiring 15-20 minutes to complete, that benchmarks employee behaviors within your business against the most customer-centric companies in the world. This translates into 8 key disciplines all with a strong focus on the customer. These are Customer Insight, Customer Foresight, Competitive Insight, Competitor Foresight, Peripheral Vision, Cross Functional Collaboration, Empowerment and Strategic Alignment. Your company’s performance in these disciplines has been shown to drive future customer satisfaction, revenue growth, and profitability.

The MRI will provide key benefits to your company.

1. Momentum, Engagement and a New Mindset: It will create focus and momentum for a Customer Centricity initiative across the business and can be used to drive the embedding process.

2. Measurement: It is designed to provide the basis for benchmarking and measuring progress on those customer-focused behaviors that drive customer satisfaction, advocacy, revenue growth, profit and plans for individual managers to drive improvements.

3. Gain Insights: Hear directly from employees on the key issues holding the organization back from being more customer-centric in specific areas and across the entire business.

4. Tangibility and Communication: It makes customer culture tangible for all staff by identifying relevant activities that support business strategies. Through its methodology and measurement process, it facilitates communication of clear priorities.

5. Gain broad employee involvement: It provides staff with an opportunity for input and direct engagement in Customer Culture initiatives and a forum for agreeing with actions to be taken and a feeling that they are a key part of the journey and contributing to its success.

6. Build a common language across the Business: It also acts as a tool for ensuring staff within the business “get it” and develops a common language and behaviors from Customer Culture initiatives. It forms the basis for ongoing discussions and actions deep within each functional group which is where the ultimate success in embedding customer culture will be determined through collaboration.

7. Accountability: It provides customer-centric behaviors that can be included in the Key Performance Indicators of managers and their teams.

8. Benchmark: It provides the business with a benchmark against some of the world’s most customer-centric organizations. How do you compare with companies like Amazon, Apple, 3M, Virgin and others included in the database? The current database includes more than 300 corporations globally across B2B and B2C and several hundred business functions and units.

Interesting in starting your journey to a customer culture? Learn more here.

This is how to become the answer to your customer’s prayers

Pope Francis at general audience

The simple answer is to make sure you know what they are praying for!

We call this customer insight. In other words, what are your customer’s needs? What are they trying to accomplish and how can you help them achieve it?

While you as the leader of your organization might have these answers, can everyone in your organization answer these questions? Really great organizations have clear answers to these questions and are aligned and empowered to deliver the experience customers value. Their leaders are what we call customer-centric leaders.

Is the Pope a customer-centric leader?

My co-author, Linden was surprised recently when he spoke with a CEO of a multinational business this month and asked him who came to mind as a customer-centric leader. He immediately answered: “the Pope”! Linden said: “Tell me more”.

He then went on to tell explain that a customer-centric leader must be prepared to take risks and he or she must go out and meet with customers and spend meaningful time with them questioning and listening. This type of leader must be prepared to be challenged and also to challenge the current status quo and visit customers in the most difficult markets. This person needs to be authentic with customers and employees through an ability to communicate personal experiences that are relevant and create belief in their followers. He said the current Pope does all these things. He travels widely across different national cultures, talks with his “customers”, takes risks particularly with personal safety and is prepared to question current dogma in the Catholic Church. He comes across as an authentic person with those he meets and how he communicates to the world at large. It got me thinking. Can we learn something from the Pope about customer-centric leadership?

This type of leader must be prepared to be challenged and also to challenge the current status quo and visit customers in the most difficult markets. This person needs to be authentic with customers and employees through an ability to communicate personal experiences that are relevant and create belief in their followers.

He said the current Pope does all these things. He travels widely across different national cultures, talks with his “customers”, takes risks particularly with personal safety and is prepared to question current dogma in the Catholic Church. He comes across as an authentic person with those he meets and how he communicates to the world at large.

It got us thinking. Can we learn something from the Pope about customer-centric leadership?

This is why playing it safe is the biggest risk for legacy companies

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Making pizzas seems like a simple business. After all its been happening for centuries and it seems like almost anyone can do it. But to make a sustainable business out of it and maintain an appealing brand in today’s competitive world requires a customer centric leadership mindset.

A starting point for Domino’s change from an ailing pizza maker in 2010 to a growing food business was a leadership change. Patrick Doyle became CEO in 2010 after Domino’s had experienced several years of stagnating business and declining share price. Doyle realized that he could only revamp the business if he could lead and create a mindset change in staff – a change from an “omission bias” where people worry more about doing something different than no change and “loss aversion” where the focus is on not losing rather than winning. I remember the great American motivational writer and speaker Zig Ziglar saying “.. the fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain”. Doyle realized that playing it safe was the riskiest course of all and he needed to create a mindset in the business that change is a necessity and a learning mentality in which for staff “failure is an option”.

A Customer-Centric Leadership Mindset was Needed to Transform Domino’s Pizzas

The change in Domino’s strategy came with a big picture view and a realization that they were not only in the pizza-making business but also in the pizza-delivery business and how this fundamentally affected the experience of their customers. This meant becoming just as much a tech company as a pizza company to transform the way customers could order and monitor the status of their order using a Domino’s app. Other apps were created to enable customers to provide feedback and become involved in games making ‘virtual’ pizzas.

Staff needed to be open to customer criticism to help them make better pizzas that customers would love eating as well as keeping them warm enough by the time of delivery. So Domino’s took on board customer views of how bad the pizzas were and suggestions on what to do to improve them.

Customers’ frank views were aired in advertising and social media and created a transparency and honesty that enhanced brand trust. Domino’s used staff in ads to describe how they had changed recipes and ingredients to make better tasting products. The company created a delivery car with one seat and a warming oven for up to 80 pizzas. It modernized its image to create more of a sense of style and a sense of humor. All of these things were needed for success. Here is 4 minute video describing what they did:

But the foundation for creating this change to a more agile, customer-responsive business came from the customer mindset brought by the new leader and embedded in the business in a way that enabled them to change and transform. As one senior leader told me recently it is the focus on the customer and their changing needs that is the motivator for leaders and staff to change!

Domino’s business results prove the point. Today, it is the second-largest pizza chain in the world, with more than 12,500 locations in more than 80 countries, and up from a share price of around $8 in 2010 to one of $215 in June 2017.

Learn more about what a customer centric culture and mindset are by reading our book, the Customer Culture Imperative.

The key reason why Customer Centric Leaders can build billion dollar companies

One word. Empowerment.

As a leader it is not easy to “let go”. I find it a real discipline to delegate and enable others in our business to do it their way and to do what’s right for the customer. So many leaders rely on processes as a security blanket that enables them to feel comfortable with what is happening in their business.

But we can take a lead from Tony Collins, former CEO of Virgin Trains in the UK, who told me:

“I put my trust in people not processes”

Tony presided over the transformation of Virgin Trains from an internal oriented public service mentality (when Virgin took the franchise from British Rail) to a customer service culture with customer satisfaction levels and profitability as benchmarks for the European rail industry. This approach empowers people and teams to make their own decisions and not wait for approvals.

Ilkka Paananen Supercell

Supercell’s Founder wants to be the Least Powerful CEO

Supercell’s CEO, Ilkka Paananen, believes the less leaders control the more powerful their companies. Supercell, a Finnish company, was worth about $10 billion in 2016 from the creation and marketing of games accessed by digital devices. Paananen says he wants to be the least powerful CEO in the world. He believes the best people will make the best teams that will produce the best games. He explains it this way: “What I mean by this is that the fewer decisions I make, the more the teams are making. In a dream scenario that means the team is making all the decisions. A couple of years ago, we were working on something called Smash Land. Everyone in the company loved it, and it was so close to meeting its targets but didn’t quite make them. So the team went to a sauna together, talked it out and took the decision to pull the plug. I was travelling at the time, so they didn’t bother to consult me – they just emailed the company to let them know. That’s just how Supercell should work.”

He was inspired by the Netflix approach to operate like a top sports team. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a former New Zealand All Blacks rugby coach who told me that they coach in the belief that “ better men make better All Blacks”. Players are empowered to make decisions under extreme pressure on the field without consultation with the leaders. This makes them a world beating team that almost always wins close games.

As a CEO of a very successful Telecoms company told me recently, when he and his senior team “got out of the way” and let their teams do what’s best for their customers, his company dramatically increased its customer retention rate and customer satisfaction levels resulting in earlier customer account payment – happy customers pay earlier. This translated directly into sustained revenue and profit growth.

These examples constantly remind me to trust my team and our partners to get on with it and create great experiences for our customers.

Learn more in our award winning book, the Customer Culture Imperative.

Customer Centric Leaders have a Service Focus where Authenticity Trumps Ego

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Lars Bjork, the CEO of Qlik, has built the company with a service focus around a “we” Leadership Style.

My father had a particular view of service. You served your customers, your employees, your family, your community and your shareholders. He would employ people fresh out of jail to give them a second chance. He knew his staff and their families and helped them when they needed help. He knew what his customers wanted and needed and trusted his staff to deliver value. He led his business with integrity and authenticity. He was a highly respected and successful businessman. From his background in retail he told me if you do all of these things right “…the profit will come up through the floor.”

Lars Bjork agrees. He has led Qlik as CEO for the past ten years and has been there from its days as a tiny start-up in Sweden to become a world leader in business intelligence software. Qlik was purchased by a private equity firm in 2016 for $3 billion. It now has around 40,000 customers and offices in 26 countries. Bjork says “leadership, for me, is that you serve the team. And the team is the people who work for you.”

How does that operate in practice? Bjork describes it this way.

“I do a lot of town halls and video. People want authenticity, an unscripted sense of ‘this is how it is’. They don’t want to hear packaged BS. They can see that from a mile away. I try to be transparent and share a bit about my private life – because how am I going to learn stuff from people, how are they going to feel comfortable with me, if I don’t share anything?”

He also asks a lot of questions and listens intently to the answers. This has become formalized with a “listening forum”. This occurs where he brings a dozen people together from different sections. He can’t say anything for an hour. They give him feedback, and he just takes it in. He does not push back or dismiss it. This leadership style is one of authenticity and service.

In our current research involving interviews of customer centric leaders I find the most impressive and effective ones are authentic, service focused, and good questioners and listeners. It doesn’t mean they have no ego. They do, but they are essentially team players and do not let their egos dictate decisions. They often do have to make the tough decisions but they do it, like my father, with authenticity and with a “service” mindset.

Learn more about the power of a customer centric culture in our award winning book, the Customer Culture Imperative.

AND if you want to build this capability in your organization check out our MarketCulture Academy.