Developing customer culture a must for one and all!
Developing the company’s customer culture, becoming or staying a customer-centric organisation: it’s a key ambition in a great many company strategies. A highly relevant one, of course, but one that needs to be thought out, organised and structured, not simply pursued at any cost.
In order to ensure a successful approach, it’s essential to understand the priority factors that contribute to customer satisfaction and customer enchantment, and focus on improving them (Bayesian analyses).
Of course companies want to improve their Customer relations, customer satisfaction and their employees’ customer positioning. But that’s not all there is to it: a company that wants to be customer-centric must promote its ambition through the appropriateness and performance of its product offer as well as through its values.
We talk a lot about the company’s raison d’être: there are often customer factors to be taken in to account in this respect.
It isn’t enough simply to want to develop customer culture in order to be credible, and for it to be visible and comprehensible to the customers themselves. Customer perceptions may take time to evolve and changes implemented may be assimilated by and become visible to a majority of customers before being highlighted by the company.
Communication is a support to customer-centric positioning that often enables reinforcement of internal buy-in and promotion of best practices vis-à-vis customers. It must never be implemented prematurely. Care must be taken to ensure there is no misalignment between communication and customer perception: market feedback can be disastrous for the brand concerned.
How do you set about developing customer culture?
The basics:
- Involvement of the General Management
- A clear, intelligible strategy
- Effective processes and tools (CRM, management tools, HR, etc.)
- Involved, well-trained employees who listen to what customers have to say
- Motivation and engagement (explanation, training, coaching).
There is no miracle recipe and everything must be set up in line with the strategy, positioning and objectives of the company or organisation concerned. A pilot “test & learn” approach is often worth implementing.
Certain points are essential nonetheless
- Quality processes for the customer with fluid journeys
- Empowered employees who can manage exceptional cases autonomously (monitored, of course, in accordance with activity sector)
- Respect for the customer and trust: bear in mind Amazon, which replaces parcels that are broken or defective, with no discussion, in good faith and without requesting a return from the customer (within the limit of a predefined total). The impact is immediate: trust, image, satisfaction, customer retention, and profitability.
- Minimising customer effort and maximising enchantment.
In order to improve a company’s customer positioning, there must be input from above, i.e. an objective on the General Management’s part, planned and paced with a view to mobilising all strata of the organisation, with an agile method based above all on readiness to listen (internally and externally) and common sense (customer positioning).
Customer-centric: BtoC and BtoB?
All sectors are concerned, and most companies want to develop their customer-centric positioning in order to meet their present and future customers’ expectations.
The person managing the transformation within the company has an increasingly important role; they are often a member of the Executive Committee, and often assisted by an expert or specialised consulting firm. Development of customer culture has become a real issue, of primordial importance in all activity sectors, competitive or otherwise. For example, local and territorial administrations and authorities are increasingly convinced that Citizen Effort Score (CzES) is a KPI to be measured and improved for the good of their administration.
Even though there are no few improvements still to be made in all sectors, there is all-round, lasting and irreversible awareness. Specialists in improving the customer experience and developing customer culture and customer-centric positioning still have plenty of companies to lend their support to and challenge in order to assist with their transformation (at customer and employee level alike, as customer culture is experienced internally and is reflected outside the company via its customers, along with its suppliers, partners, prospects, and all its contacts in the broad sense of the term).
Is a customer-orientated strategy a guarantee of economic performance?
Yes, the question must be asked with regard to 2 aspects:
1 –intrinsic profitability: I retain customers; I create recommendation and positive image
2 – profitability in my environment: if I’m not customer-centric and my competitor or a new arrival positions itself on excellence at customer culture level, what risks do I run?
Development of customer culture (which is a matter of acting on the company and its employees alike) must be implemented in line with the company’s strategic choice within its market. For example, a minimum core offer for all customers and options for those who so wish, or all-inclusive premium positioning for customers or low-cost positioning: everything is possible but everything must be explained, everything must be clear to the customer. The important thing is transparency and the customer’s comprehension.
Another important point: don’t go too far. For example, in the insurance sector, customers always want greater responsiveness; they demand 24-hour management, which requires major investments on the insurer’s part even though 48-hour management generates similar levels of satisfaction at less cost to the insurer. (The delta of perception and customer expectations is negligible between management in 24 hours and in 48 hours).
And how do you position yourself on the customer-centric ladder?
This is a legitimate question but it must only be asked with reference to the goals that the company has set itself: how does it want to position itself, differentiate itself (or not), communicate, what business model, what short-, medium- and long-term strategies, what level of willingness and what investment capacity? Being the leader on its market at customer culture level cannot be a goal in itself.
Development of customer culture is above all a means not a strategic end.
👉 Init is a marketing studies institute established in 1995, a pioneer of and expert in customer satisfaction and experience studies.