10 Barriers to Building a Customer-Centric Culture—And How to Overcome Them

Posted on August 14, 2024 by | 3 comments
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Creating a customer-centric culture isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a business imperative. But many leaders struggle to get there. Here are the top 10 factors working against building a customer-centric culture, actionable strategies to overcome them, and real-world examples of leaders who made it happen:

  1. Lack of Leadership Commitment
    Barrier: Without top-down commitment, customer-centric initiatives often fizzle.
    Solution: Leaders must champion customer-centricity, making it a core value. It starts by taking an honest look at how customer centric the company really is…not what leaders think it is.
    Example: Jeff Bezos at Amazon prioritizes customer obsession, integrating it into every company decision.
  2. Siloed Departments
    Barrier: Departments working in isolation lead to fragmented customer experiences.
    Solution: Foster cross-functional collaboration with shared customer-focused goals.
    Example: Zappos breaks down silos by empowering every employee to deliver exceptional customer service, regardless of department.
  3. Short-Term Focus
    Barrier: Focusing solely on quarterly results can undermine long-term customer relationships.
    Solution: Balance short-term targets with long-term customer loyalty strategies.
    Example: Adobe shifted from product sales to subscriptions, focusing on long-term customer engagement.
  4. Inadequate Customer Insights
    Barrier: Decisions made without deep customer insights often miss the mark.
    Solution: Invest in tools and processes to gather and analyze customer data.
    Example: Netflix uses data analytics to understand viewer preferences, creating content that resonates with their audience.
  5. Resistance to Change
    Barrier: Organizational inertia can stall customer-centric initiatives.
    Solution: Lead with change management strategies that emphasize the benefits of customer-centricity not just to the organization but to individuals and their teams.
    Example: Microsoft, under Satya Nadella, embraced a growth mindset, leading to a more customer-focused culture.
  6. Poor Communication
    Barrier: Miscommunication between teams and customers can erode trust.
    Solution: Establish clear, consistent communication channels focused on customer needs.
    Example: Slack improved customer communication by integrating feedback loops into their product development process.
  7. Misaligned Incentives
    Barrier: Employees may prioritize the wrong things if incentives don’t align with customer-centric goals.
    Solution: Align rewards and recognition with customer-focused outcomes.
    Example: Ritz-Carlton empowers employees to spend up to $2,000 per guest to resolve issues, incentivizing top-notch customer service.
  8. Underestimating Employee Experience
    Barrier: Disengaged employees lead to disengaged customers.
    Solution: Invest in employee engagement and create a customer-centric internal culture.
    Example: Southwest Airlines prioritizes employee satisfaction, knowing that happy employees create happy customers.
  9. Lack of Accountability
    Barrier: Without accountability, customer-centric initiatives can lose momentum.
    Solution: Establish clear ownership and accountability for customer outcomes.
    Example: Apple’s “DRI” (Directly Responsible Individual) approach ensures that someone is always accountable for customer-centric results.
  10. Ignoring Customer Feedback
    Barrier: Failing to act on customer feedback leads to missed opportunities for improvement.
    Solution: Create systems for gathering, analyzing, and acting on feedback.
    Example: Toyota’s “Customer First” philosophy ensures customer feedback drives continuous organizational improvement.

Real Success Comes from Taking Action

These barriers are common, but they’re not insurmountable. Leaders who commit to overcoming them are seeing actual results—like Amazon’s relentless focus on customer obsession or Microsoft’s transformation under a customer-first mindset.

Ready to take your business to the next level? Start by setting a baseline to see where you stand and get the actionable insights you need to make progress with the MRI Benchmark.

The rewards are clear: increased customer loyalty, stronger brand reputation, and sustainable business growth.

What steps are you taking today to overcome these barriers? Which of these are the biggest inhibitors in your company?

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How can you lead like Jeff Bezos of Amazon?

Posted on July 20, 2024 by | Leave a comment

Jeff Bezos is one of the most successful business founders and leaders of modern times; in fact, what he has achieved is proof of the importance of customer-centricity and the need to build customer-centric cultures. So, how can you develop some of his leadership capabilities that will help you in your business?

You can follow these practical steps:

1. Develop a Customer-Obsessed Mindset

  • Know Your Customer: Invest time in understanding your customers’ needs, preferences, and pain points.
  • Create a Customer Feedback Loop: Establish systems to regularly gather and analyze customer feedback.
  • Innovate for the Customer: Develop products and services with the customer’s needs at the forefront.

2. Foster a Culture of Innovation

  • Encourage Experimentation: Promote an environment where risk-taking and experimenting is encouraged, even if it leads to failure.
  • Celebrate Failures: View failures as learning opportunities and share lessons learned with the team.
  • Allocate Resources for Innovation: Dedicate time and budget for innovative projects and ideas.

3. Think Long-Term

  • Set Visionary Goals: Develop and communicate a clear, long-term vision for the company.
  • Invest in Future Growth: Make decisions prioritizing long-term benefits over short-term gains.
  • Be Patient: Understand that significant achievements often take time and sustained effort.

4. Make Data-Driven Decisions

  • Collect Relevant Data: Implement systems to gather data on performance, customer behavior, and market trends.
  • Analyze and Act on Data: Use data to drive decisions and strategies. Regularly review key metrics and adjust plans as needed.
  • Encourage Data Literacy: Ensure your team has the skills to interpret and use data effectively.

5. Set High Standards

  • Define Excellence: Clearly articulate what excellence looks like for your organization and set high standards accordingly.
  • Hold People Accountable: Ensure that everyone understands and meets these high standards.
  • Lead by Example: Demonstrate commitment to high standards through actions and decisions.

6. Embrace Change and Adaptability

  • Stay Agile: Be willing to pivot strategies and adapt to changing market conditions.
  • Encourage Flexibility: Foster a culture where employees are comfortable with change and can adapt quickly.
  • Monitor Industry Trends: Keep an eye on industry developments and emerging trends to stay ahead.

7. Delegate and Empower

  • Trust Your Team: Delegate tasks and responsibilities to capable team members and trust them to execute.
  • Empower Decision-Making: Allow team members to make decisions and take ownership of their work.
  • Provide Support and Resources: Ensure your team has the tools and resources needed to succeed.

8. Communicate Clearly and Transparently

  • Be Direct and Honest: Communicate with clarity and honesty, both internally and externally.
  • Share Vision and Goals: Regularly update your team on the company’s vision, goals, and progress.
  • Encourage Open Dialogue: Foster an environment where feedback and communication are encouraged.

9. Focus on Talent Acquisition and Development

  • Hire the Best: Look for top talent and ensure they align with your company’s values and goals.
  • Invest in Development: Provide opportunities for continuous learning and growth for your team members.
  • Build a Strong Culture: Create a workplace culture that attracts and retains high-caliber individuals.

10. Practice Frugality

  • Optimize Resources: Be efficient with resources and seek ways to reduce costs without compromising quality.
  • Encourage Resourcefulness: Foster a mindset of doing more with less and finding innovative solutions to challenges.
  • Evaluate Spending: Regularly review expenses and cut unnecessary costs to maintain financial health.

By incorporating these practices into your leadership style, you can emulate Jeff Bezos’s approach to building and leading Amazon.

A great place to begin your customer-centric journey is with the MRI Benchmark, a tool leaders use to build strong customer capabilities across their team, department, or organization.

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Customer Centric Culture as a “Product” consumed by employees

Posted on April 7, 2024 by | Leave a comment
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The term culture is a loaded term, often associated with misalignments between what an organization professes to be and how it actually operates. So many companies do it so poorly that cynicism can be very strong when it comes to attempts to understand or change things.

Dharmesh Shah, cofounder of Hubspot found this out the hard way when he was asked to solve for “culture” at Hubspot early on in the businesses development.

Brian Halligan, Dharmesh’s cofounder just attended a CEO networking group and said “I hear this culture thing is really important.” Culture had never been mentioned ever prior to this conversation… Culture had come up as being something that maybe they should pay some attention to as it might have an impact on how they scale and continue to be successful during rapid growth.

Brian said “Dharmesh can you go do that culture thing.” Dharmesh responded “Wow from what little I know about culture it sounds like it sort of involves people, I like people but I don’t really like being around a lot of people…seems like I would be the wrong person but anyone I am a team player so let me see what I can find out.”

Dharmesh began by gathering some inputs from employees to try and determine how they would describe the existing culture.

The responses shocked Dharmesh, there was a visceral negative reaction to the idea of organizational culture. Much of this came from the disconnection many employees had experienced when working at other organizations where what they said and what they did was incongruent.

One of them said what are you doing Dharmesh? What’s next are you going to put up posters on the wall about excellence? Hubspot is not the company I thought I joined!

Dharmesh pushed again regardless of the negative reaction as he knew it was important to find out more.

He decided to use the NPS framework to ask employees how likely are you to recommend working at Hubspot? and why?

What did Dharmesh find? That employees like working at Hubspot because of the other employees… not very actionable. But it led to Dharmesh defining what are the attributes of those people that work at Hubspot and this became the basis for describing the original culture in the Culture Code Deck

Culture as Product

“Every company builds two products, one is the product they build for the customers and the other is the product they build for their team” – Dharmesh Shah

The number one mistake founders make, according to Dharmesh, is they believe their job is to preserve the culture. That is not the job because the needs of customers change and the needs of employees change and so culture always needs to be iterated and developed, it never stops.

This is one of the reasons we built the MRI Benchmark as it is designed to help you understand how customer centric you are today and to maintain and improve your level of customer centricity over time.

The forces dragging your organization away from customers as your business grows are strong. By having some measure of customer centricity you will always have a strong north star.

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What do customer-centric CEOs do to build customer-centric cultures?

Posted on March 28, 2024 by | Leave a comment

Customer-centric leadership is a management approach that places the customer at the center of an organization’s strategy, operations, and decision-making processes. It involves creating a culture where every employee, from the frontline staff to the top executives, is focused on delivering exceptional customer experiences and maximizing customer satisfaction. Here’s an example of customer-centric leadership:

Imagine a telecommunications company called “TelcoFlow,” which specializes in mobile phone plans for businesses. The CEO, Sarah, embraces customer-centric leadership and instills this mindset throughout the organization. Here’s how she demonstrates customer-centric leadership:

1. Setting the vision and tone: Sarah communicates a clear vision that puts customers first. She emphasizes that the company’s success depends on understanding and exceeding customer expectations. This vision is reinforced in company meetings, training sessions, and internal communications.

2. Empowering employees: Sarah empowers employees at all levels to make decisions that benefit customers. She encourages frontline staff to go the extra mile in resolving customer issues and providing personalized service. Employees are trained to anticipate customer needs and proactively address them.

3. Gathering customer insights: Sarah ensures that the company consistently gathers customer feedback through surveys, social media monitoring, and direct interactions. She personally reviews customer feedback and shares insights with her leadership team and employees, using this information to drive product development, customer service improvements, and strategic decisions.

4. Fostering collaboration: Sarah fosters cross-functional collaboration between departments to deliver seamless customer experiences. Regular meetings are held where marketing, sales, operations, and customer service teams discuss customer pain points, feedback, and ways to enhance the overall customer journey.

5. Leading by example: Sarah sets an example by regularly interacting with customers, whether visiting retail stores, attending customer events, or responding to customer inquiries personally. She actively listens to customer feedback and takes personal responsibility for addressing any significant issues or concerns.

6. Celebrating customer success: Sarah celebrates customer success stories and shares them across the organization. Employees who go above and beyond in serving customers are recognized and rewarded, reinforcing the customer-centric culture.

Through Sarah’s customer-centric leadership, TelcoFlow has developed a reputation for exceptional customer experiences, resulting in high customer loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, and strong financial performance.

Employees feel empowered and motivated to contribute to the company’s customer-centric mission, fostering a cycle of continuous improvement and customer satisfaction.

While much of this is well known today, the question is how do you know whether your company is truly customer-centric? And what areas you should focus on to improve.

The MRI Benchmark is the tool leaders use to assess and improve their customer-centric culture and you can now try it for free: www.mribenchmark.com

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Applying Ethan Evans’s (Ex-VP at Amazon) Secrets of the Magic Loop to Your Career Development as a Customer Experience Professional

Posted on January 26, 2024 by | Leave a comment

As a Customer Experience (CX) professional, we are always looking for ways to improve the customer journey and our career growth. One of the most effective ways to do this is to apply Ethan Evans’s Magic Loop approach to your career development. Ethan Evans is a former VP at Amazon with extensive first hand experience of what it means to be customer-obsessed. His Magic Loop approach has helped numerous professionals achieve their career goals. I have adapted his model to add my take on it but of course all the credit goes to Ethan for developing this great model. You can see the full model laid out here. Let’s dive into how you can apply this approach to your own career development.

Step 1: Self-reflection – Are you doing the best job you can in your current CX role?

The first step to applying the Magic Loop approach is simple but critical: Self-reflection. Take a moment to reflect on your current position and assess your career goals, what you want to achieve, and where you want to be in the future. Analyze your CX strengths and weaknesses, which areas interest you, and what you would like to learn and improve. Are you strong in customer survey research? Great dealing with customers one on one? Able to build journey maps? Can you influence team or organisational culture to be more customer centric? Are you good at building CX business cases?
Make a list of actionable steps to achieve these goals and develop a plan with a practical timeline. The more specific and measurable the objectives, the better you will be able to increase your skills and improve your career growth.

Step 2: Experimentation – How can you help your manager?

The Magic Loop approach suggests that experimentation is essential to career development. Ask your manager what you can do to help, then do it. Be open to new experiences, take advantage of networking opportunities, and exit your comfort zone. Try and learn new things, take new courses, involve yourself in different projects, or volunteer to gain new skills. Engage leaders in other functions, gain a broader and deeper perspective of the business. Exploring new areas can help you see opportunities from different perspectives, allowing you to utilize various perspectives to solve problems more effectively.

Step 3: Make sure you implement

Whatever your manager asks, take it on, get it done. After this experimentation, evaluate your experience and knowledge. Reflect on the new skills you’ve learned and explore how they can be used to enhance your career development. Analyze whether the skills align with your career goals, the challenges you faced, what you enjoyed, and what you found challenging. Use this feedback to adapt your plan and determine what steps you need to take to continue your learning journey.

Step 4: Ask your manager how you can develop further so you can advance your CX career

The final step is to collaborate with your manager to advance. Use the evaluation feedback to improve your plan and reinforce your strengths. Identify what areas you want to improve and focus on learning new skills relevant to your career goal. Seek feedback from your manager, colleagues and other leaders, and identify gaps between your current skills and your career goal. Use this feedback to tailor your personal development plan so that it aligns with your career goals. This feedback loop mirrors the one that many of you are responsible for in your organizations, the customer feedback loop.

Step 5: Do as they recommend to improve your value.

Again make sure you take on their recommendations and stretch yourself to demonstrate your value as a CX pro, take on a new challenge that will grow your competency and contribute to the business.

Step 6: Advanced Magic Loop. Suggest your own ideas!!!

Ethan recommends for those who are more advanced in their careers that they recommend ideas.

You could use language like this to suggest an idea, “I noticed that we are becoming a little too internally focused and sometimes we forget to get customer input. I’ve been thinking we could get the team’s input by running a simple customer-centric culture assessment to gather everyone’s view. Would that be helpful?”

The most successful CX professionals we know have taken on the challenge of influencing their organisations level of customer centric culture. What better way to have impact than to help change the environment within which your organization operates!

In fact as I am writing this post, there is a team of awesome CX professionals enrolled in the Masters of Customer Experience Management at Michigan State University currently undertaking their own projects to determine their organizations’ level of customer centricity.

For them it is a great way to get their senior leaders involved in a conversation while providing valuable data on how they benchmark versus the best and uncover the hidden factors that maybe stopping their organization’s growth.

Repeat this Magic Loop!

Conclusion:

Ethan Evan’s Magic Loop approach is a proven way to build your career. Its cycle is designed to encourage movement and improvement. As a Customer Experience (CX) professional seeking career development, using the Magic Loop approach can help you achieve your goals and reach your true potential. The Magic Loop approach will allow you to assess your current career position, encourage experimentation, assess your learning experience, and reinforce your new skills while closing the gaps.

So, take that first step today, and start experimenting, why not try the MRI Benchmark, a customer-centric culture assessment tool, and witness the magic of the loop approach unfold in your career!

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How do you persuade others to help you create a customer-centric culture?

Posted on September 13, 2023 by | Leave a comment

Daniel H. Pink, author of the 2012 best-selling book “To Sell Is Human” provides a great example of how to persuade others with the right questions. The example he gives is related to parenting however the method applies equally to influencing others to consider new approaches or changes such as building customer-centric cultures.

In this 4-minute video, Dan explains the concept of motivational interviewing. Specifically, this involves asking someone to rate their own readiness to start doing something you think is important. This will lead them to articulate their honest reasons for not doing it currently. From there, you can influence them to adhere to desired behavior more easily.

How does this relate to our customer culture tool? The business MRI? 

Well, this is exactly how the MRI Benchmark assessment works. It prompts self-reflection on the 8 disciplines of customer culture, where do I rate the organization high, where are we low? And what do others in the organization think about where we stand?

The MRI Benchmark asks leaders the right questions, it gets them to think about what they are doing and whether it truly is customer-centric behavior.

This creates a tension that requires action, if scores are lower than expected a natural drive kicks in to want to improve. The journey towards a more customer-centric better performing business has begun!

Importantly once a benchmark is established you can focus on what obstacles need to be overcome to build a truly customer-centric culture.

It is actually not that hard.

Check out the MRI Benchmark today for just $US1…

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How to go from “Good to Great” Customer Centricity

Posted on September 6, 2023 by | Leave a comment
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The image above sits on my desk in my home office as a source of inspiration. It is a simple note from one of my favorite business authors, Jim Collins, responding to an unsolicited copy of our book, The Customer Culture Imperative. It is a testament to Jim how gracious he was to even respond, not having ever met nor heard of our work, yet he took the time to pen a handwritten note of encouragement, truly the behavior of a level 5 leader!

Hence the title of this post: going from good to great customer centricity!

Are you looking to make the jump from good customer centricity to great? You’re not alone – business leaders and customer experience professionals alike are recognizing that staying one step ahead of customers’ changing needs is essential for long-term success. While many organizations know they need to focus on putting their customers front and center, knowing where to start can be a challenge.

In this post, we’ll explore some key strategies for making the leap from good customer centricity to great. We’ll cover how data-driven customer insights can help organizations better understand their customers by listening to their own employees and identifying areas in which their products and services could be improved, as well as look at tactical ideas for delivering truly personalized experiences.

Read on for more on transforming your organization into a truly customer-centric powerhouse!

Customer-Centric Mindsets:
Understand Your Customers – Know what makes them tick and determine the best way to reach out to them

Customer centricity begins with a mindset, one in which all leaders (regardless of function) and employees begin by viewing the world through the customer’s eyes. Understanding your customers is fundamental to achieving success. Gaining insight into their needs and preferences, and how best to reach out to them is key. Customer insights can help you understand who your customers are and why they buy, while customer foresight will allow you to anticipate what products or services could be in demand in the future. This information can help you create relevant content that speaks to the needs of your customers, allowing you to effectively communicate with them through the channels that make sense for your business.

Develop a Customer-Focused Value Proposition – Create an attractive offer that is tailored to their needs and interests

Developing a value proposition tailored to customer needs is crucial for any successful business. It should accurately reflect the benefits that customers will gain from engaging with your brand and how it provides more than what competitors can offer. Doing proper research to understand their buying habits, interests and preferences is key to crafting an attractive offer that will make them take notice.

Listening to employees who engage with customers regularly is an immediate source of data that many organizations miss. Those on the front lines interacting with customers regularly get a good feel for what customers value and the things they don’t like about doing business with your organization. Start by listening to them and engaging them in developing and refining your value propositions.

Additionally, having a clearly defined target audience and knowing exactly who the value proposition should be aimed at is also important in order to ensure it resonates with potential customers. Taking these steps will help create an effective customer-focused value proposition that has the best chance of persuading customers to embrace your brand.

Make it easy for customers – Leverage technology to streamline communication processes with customers

Automation tools provide a great way to quickly and efficiently streamline communication processes with customers. By using such automated software, businesses can automate mundane customer service tasks such as answering frequently asked questions and confirming order details. This type of automation not only reduces the time spent on mundane tasks but also allows the customer service representative to spend more time interacting with customers in meaningful ways that build better relationships.

Focus on Personalization – Utilize data analysis to tailor messages, content, and products to individual customers

Utilizing data analysis to customize messages, content, and products for each individual customer is an increasingly effective way to provide excellent service to customers. It can help businesses ascertain the wants and needs of each customer, allowing them to present tailored suggestions and offers that are much more relevant. Moreover, it sets a company apart in terms of its reputation for catering to individuals over large masses. Using data analysis additionally helps optimize the overall user experience with targeted messaging, personalized recommendations, and clever segmentation.

Monitor Feedback Regularly – Keep track of customer sentiment and adjust your approach accordingly

In a digital age, it is imperative to stay in tune with customer sentiment. By monitoring feedback regularly, businesses can adjust their approach to meet customer needs, shifting any negative sentiment towards branding or product offerings to positive. Doing so not only cultivates greater brand loyalty but also provides an accurate reflection of your business’s success or potential mistakes made. Listening closely to feedback can allow businesses to avoid potential pitfalls and instead move forward stronger and better than ever before.

Invest in Customer “Mindset” Capabilities – Empower customer-facing AND internally facing staff with the right skill sets and tools for success

Investing in customer “mindset” training is an essential component of providing your customers with the best possible experience. Employees who are enabled and encouraged to put the “customer lens” on regardless of their role add immense value to customer and colleague interactions. Investing in a comprehensive training program for those not only on the frontlines of customer service but also those who provide internal services translates into more productivity, improved customer care, and most importantly adds to the overall success of your business.

Understanding and unlocking the potential of effectively engaging with your customers is key to growing your business. By getting to know them, crafting an attractive value proposition, utilizing automation tools, and monitoring customer feedback, you can constantly adjust your approach towards customers in a manner that is tailored according to their needs. Additionally, investing in customer service training is a great way to ensure your team is equipped with the right skill sets and knowledge for success. When it comes down to it, strong customer engagement requires consistent effort, attention, and experimentation.

How many of these activities does your organization embrace? Are your employees on board?

Find out easily and go from “good to great” by measuring your level of customer centricity. Utilizing the Market Responsiveness Index (MRI) is a great way to measure just how customer-centric your organization really is as well as identify areas of improvement.

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It’s not about huge transformations, it’s about small customer-centric practices that make a big difference

Posted on December 28, 2022 by | Leave a comment

While some organizations need to engage in large transformation projects that involve seismic changes in business models, technology, products and services, and people, to survive, these are the exception rather than the norm.

Many leaders believe that changing to a stronger customer-centric business requires disruptive change with a high risk of failure, so they fail to act. Yes, it can be risky, as many case studies point out.

Why?

Many customer-centric initiatives lack the right measurement and lack a coherent strategy to strengthen the foundation of customer-centricity – culture. They also include too many projects that dilute focus and diffuse efforts. By not including these crucial ingredients, initiatives falter, and engagement and buy-in of leaders and employees is lost.

But it doesn’t have to be that way!

Strengthening your customer-centric culture can be achieved with consistent, easy-to-implement, practices that everyone in an organization can adopt. It should be preceded by measurement to know where you stand, so you don’t spend money on initiatives that are not necessary. Also, you will identify those initiatives that will make a significant difference.

Many of the world’s best practices are simple and easy to implement such as placing “customer” as the starting item on the agenda at every meeting. You will need to create a logic as to “why” meetings should start with a discussion about customers and an emotional connection that includes a customer story as to how those discussions benefit customers, employees, and the business.

If this, and other easy-to-adopt practices are implemented and become habits of behavior, your customer culture will become stronger. In addition, all the other things you do, such as getting feedback from customers and collaborating in teams to create value for customers, will multiply the benefits to your customers, your team, and your business.

The trick is to first know where you stand through measurement. This is the catalyst to gain buy-in and commitment from leaders and employees to implement specific practices. Then, check progress along the way and measure the benefits.

If you follow this process, your teams and your organization will transform before your eyes – and it will not only be painless, but it will be easy to continue. The risks are low and the payoffs can be high!

Result? Engaged and inspired leaders and team members. Appreciative and loyal customers. Growth and profit for the business. Satisfied shareholders.

What’s in it for you as a leader of this approach?

Great satisfaction from making a real difference and rapid promotion based on demonstrated success!

Ready to take your customer centricity to the next level? Don’t miss out on value insights that can help you improve customer centricity. Visit MRI Benchmark!

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It’s not about customer projects, it’s about an ongoing program of unity of customer mindset focus and practices by everyone in the business.

Posted on December 14, 2022 by | 1 comment

Today, many organizations have a myriad of projects designed to help the business become more customer-centric.

Ask anyone in a large government department that is looking to provide better services and improved service for its customers. Or in a large insurance company or a large manufacturer. They will tell you “we have 32 projects on the go for that.” Yes, they do.

But are they effective in achieving their goal? Sometimes, but mostly not!

Why?

In too many businesses, there is no overall program that creates a unified focus on customers for everyone in the organization. Without this, you have diverging interests and motivations aligned with specific projects. I am not criticizing people here. It is natural that individuals and teams will enthusiastically work on their own projects. But this can be counterproductive for the organization in moving forward as one unified group. It can enhance silo thinking – not silos around functions but silos around projects. Does this look like your organization?

What’s needed?

You must have singular priorities that everyone understands, agrees on, and is motivated to act on. You must have agreed on customer-centric practices and actions that everyone commits to doing. You must have a shared understanding of what your customer segments’ needs are. And you must know, how in your role and function, you can add value for those customers. In short, you need a unified and shared mindset, priorities, and agreed practices that are acted upon day in and day out.

One company we work with has what they call a Success Index. This tool is used by everyone in the business to document the actions they are committed to over 3 months, 6 months, and beyond. Each quarter each individual and their boss reviews their progress and an index is used to measure their success.

This is a simple and powerful tool when used to create unity around a customer mindset supported by tangible practices that lead to increased value for customers and work colleagues.

How do you get started?

First, get feedback from employees on what is working and not working applying the 8 disciplines framework that we know are the foundation of customer-centric practices used by the most highly customer-centric organizations in the world.

Find out more about this research-based 8 disciplines methodology at MarketCulture.

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It’s not about the leaders’ views on customers, it’s about independent measurement

Posted on November 30, 2022 by | Leave a comment

If you ask senior leaders how customer-centric is the business they lead, the chances are that they will be much more positive than the reality.

If you ask 10 people in a business from different functions how customer-centric their business is, they will likely give widely different opinions.

If you ask 500 people, you will definitely get a wide variety of views.

If you ask 1000, there will be an even wider divergence.

Why?

Because they don’t objectively measure the most vital ingredient of customer centricity – customer culture: that is, what people in the business do that impacts customers. Specifically – how do they behave and what practices do they implement day in and day out with respect to customers.

We know from countless studies that an organization’s customer-centric culture drives customer experience that in turn drives customer retention and loyalty that leads to higher growth and profit as shown in this diagram.

If you don’t embed a strong customer culture right across the organization, you won’t get the rest – retained customers, trust, productivity, growth, and profit. Also, as a leader, you won’t get your team behind you or the momentum you need to be successful. At best your performance will be short-term, at worst it could be disastrous.

To get a strong customer culture you must find out where you are today through objective measurement that includes feedback from a large sample of people in your team or your business. Not just any measurement like employee engagement or net promoter score. Both of these measures are useful, but they do not measure customer culture.

This culture gap is a risky blind spot where decisions are taken in the dark and money invested on improving customer experience is lost.

You must use a purpose-built customer culture measurement tool. This must include universal behaviors that have been definitively found and tested to enable you to assess your company’s level of customer-centric practices – benchmarked against the most customer-centric and profitable businesses in the world.

There is only one purpose-built, validly tested, and reliably implemented customer culture measurement tool in the world – the Market Responsiveness Index (MRI). This has been used by more than 1000 organizations over the last 10 years and helped them create a unified view of their level of customer culture that everyone can agree on – and act to strengthen.

Visit us at MarketCulture to take this vital step.

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