How to create a winning customer-centric culture
It’s time to get emotional with our customers!
In the era of the highly connected and informed consumer, where choice is endless and loyalty is in short supply the challenge lies in how to take the leap from having satisfied customers to ones that will advocate for you.
With Net Promoter Score (NPS) as one of the most widely used measures of customer advocacy, I firmly believe that the key to creating promoters for your brand, those that will rate you a 9 or 10 out of 10, is about creating that emotional connection.
So unsurprisingly, the key to creating this emotional connection starts and ends with your people.
It’s a virtuous circle – happy staff, delivering great service, brings more customers and results in more revenue.
That all sounds pretty simple on paper so where to start?
Culture is key – frontline teams are already passionate about the customer, they know the pain points but are often restricted by processes, policies or lack of access to systems.
In essence, they’re waiting for HQ to catch up!
8 Ways to create a super-charge your culture
If you are keen to transition your business to a customer-centric culture these 8 tips below will help ensure success:
1. Invest in the skills and capabilities of your people
Just as important as the formal training and tools, so too is ensuring your people have the digital literacy skills they need to confidently support customers.
2. Align the goalposts
Be clear on the aspirations for the customer experience and formalise it.
A public customer commitment is a great way to do this.
If your people know the boundaries they will feel more confident to go the extra mile.
3. Empower your people to solve issues locally
Give them access to the systems and information they need to resolve a problem first time without the handoffs.
4. Relax the rule book
Rules are important however so to is the instincts of your people.
If they feel there is more they could or should be doing for a customer to raise it at the time, don’t just accept the status quo.
These are the moments that genuine emotional connection and advocacy are made
5. Continuous feedback
Ensure that the right customer feedback management systems are in place down to a transactional level so teams receive localised feedback that they can action
6.Foster innovation
The best insights come from those who are closest to the customer, involve them often and early in idea generation
7. Showcase your heroes
Publicly recognise and celebrate those who go over and above for customers.
It’’s not all about grand gestures – by sharing customer stories your frontline teams can see what they too can do to make a difference.
8. Leadership, Leadership, Leadership
Embedding a culture of customer centricity takes more than just words on a page.
It is about leaders role modelling the right behaviours and making the tough calls to put the customer experience ahead of efficiency savings.
Don’t be daunted by the list of things to do – an easy way to start your own customer movement and build your customer-centric culture is to begin each meeting with a customer moment, sharing a customer story both good or bad.
It is incredibly powerful and quickly becomes a habit.
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