Customer-centric companies put the customer at the center of all they do; they ensure that they make no decisions without first thinking of the customer and the impact that a decision has on them. Putting the "customer" in customer experience means that companies are taking the time to understand their customers — through listening (e.g., getting to know them through surveys), characterizing (e.g., creating customer personas) and empathizing (e.g., considering the customer experience from their perspective) — and then using that understanding to design a better experience for them. In short, customer understanding is the foundation of customer-centricity.
When you think about companies that are customer-centric or even customer-obsessed, which ones come to mind? Probably the likes of Amazon, Zappos, the Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons and Southwest Airlines right? How did they get there? What do they do differently to ensure they always deliver great experiences for their customers?
Here are eight questions to answer to help you get on the road to customer centricity.
1. What are your company's core values?
Culture equals values plus behavior. Core values are the foundation of a company's culture; they are the fundamental beliefs of an organization and can be summarized as what the employees do when no one is looking. When paired with corresponding and expected behaviors, core values can help employees understand the difference between right and wrong and how to interact with customers and with each other. They also guide employees on how to act not only when they are presented with a questionable or challenging situation but also day-in and day-out. More importantly, some of the values must support and be aligned with a focus on customers.
2. Do employees know, live and breathe the core values?
In order for values to drive behavior and, ultimately, the culture, they must be communicated regularly, and they must be lived by all employees and executives alike. Your core values are meaningless if they don't inspire and drive the behavior you expect everyone to display.
3. Are you hiring, firing and promoting based on these core values?
To build the culture you want, you must be willing to hire, fire and promote based on your core values. Companies that do so can help keep the culture intact and show employees that the values aren't just statements on posters in the conference room.
4. Have you defined and communicated the brand promise?
Your brand promise is a promise to your customers that sets expectations and defines the benefits they'll receive from your brand. The brand promise — which is different from a mission statement or a tagline — can be used to align all of the organization's activities and guide people, processes, products, systems, etc. Everything you do as an organization supports and enforces the brand promise. It's meant for both customers and employees because employees must deliver on the promise.
5. Are your executives committed?
You must have the commitment (in addition to buy-in, which is different) from your leadership team to focus on the customer. This requires an outright commitment from your CEO and the executives. Commit, and act. Actions speak louder than words. Without this commitment, you may not get the resources — time, human, financial, etc. — to shift the focus.
6. Is the employee experience a primary focus for your executives?
What's better than an executive commitment to focus on customers? An executive commitment to putting people first — to ensuring that the employees are taken care of. In turn, employees will take care of the customers. As Tom Peters wrote, citing advice from Hal Rosenbluth, "If you genuinely want to put customers first, you must put employees more first." This isn't a chicken or egg debate; executives must prioritize the employee experience over the customer experience. Without your employees, your customer experience doesn't exist. With unhappy employees, you will likely get unhappy customers.
7. Are the customers' needs ingrained in the organization's DNA?
A customer-centric culture is one in which the customers' needs and perspectives are woven into the fabric of the organization and are, literally, at the center of every decision, conversation, action, process, strategy, etc. To make that happen, you can employ the three techniques to achieve customer understanding that I mentioned earlier.
Other ways to keep the customer front and center include: having an empty chair in meetings to represent the customer (à la Amazon); placing life-sized customer persona cutouts throughout the office; streaming customer comments and interviews on monitors in the office; designating a customer advocate in every meeting; bringing customers into meetings; creating a customer room that contains examples of customer feedback, customer personas, journey maps, core values and the company's customer experience vision; and hiring a chief customer officer to advocate for the customer throughout the organization.
8. How are decisions made in your company?
There are essentially two ways that decisions can be made in an organization: One is customer-centric, and the other isn't. When executives and employees look at the business from the customers' perspectives and then design products, services and processes and make decisions based on what's best for the customers, they're employing outside-in thinking. The business does things that are in the best interest of its customers.
On the other hand, when a business designs products, services and processes based on internal thinking and intuition ("We know what customers want"), then they're employing inside-out thinking. Customers' needs and perspectives aren't part of the equation. Executives make decisions because they think it's what will benefit the business.
It’s not enough to say you want to be like Zappos or Southwest Airlines. They’ve put in the work and have methodically and purposefully built their organizations, their brands and their customer experiences to be what they are today.
The first step to transforming your culture into one that's customer-centric is a mindset shift — followed by a behavioral shift. These shifts start from the top. Make the decision to think and act differently. Answer these eight questions for your business, and then get started on putting the customer at the center of everything you do.
