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To say that customer experience is important might be the understatement of the decade—or at least of the previous few years. The business benefits of focusing on customer experience can't be overhyped. For instance, an oft-cited Deloitte report from 2017 noted that customer-centric companies make greater profits than their less customer-focused counterparts.
Just as clear are the risks associated with not giving customer experience the right focus. A 2022 consumer survey found that 49% of customers who left a brand they’d previously been loyal to indicated poor customer experiences as the reason. In fact, a PWC study found that around one-third of customers would stop doing business with a brand they love after a single negative experience.
Customer expectations have changed with the world, and they continue to grow and evolve. To remain competitive and create an optimal customer experience, businesses must start from within. Here are four steps for creating a more customer-focused culture.
1. Understand Your Current State
Do you know where your organization stands when it comes to customer experience? In addition to collecting customer feedback, it's essential to gain insights from your people about whether there's a culture in place that fosters customer-centricity. For instance, early in our customer experience journey at Accurate, we surveyed company leaders to create a baseline understanding of our current state. This strategy helps ensure you have a clear picture of your starting point, as well as any cultural gaps that may need to be addressed.
2. Start The Journey
True evolution into a more customer-centric organization requires intentional effort. This kind of culture doesn’t happen by chance, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It's an ongoing journey that includes the entire organization—and particularly an unyielding commitment from the chief executive. It's vital to have a direction in mind as you embark on your mission to achieve a more customer-centric culture. While senior leadership may be involved, the employees with the best understanding of your customers should have a say in charting the course.
Don’t treat it as a secret to be kept by those parties. A successful customer experience transformation requires culture change, which means involvement and buy-in at every level. Designate culture champions at the leadership level who can keep the vision front and center, which will help build and maintain engagement across the organization and add a layer of accountability.
3. Keep People At The Heart
In a time when the use of technology and AI is perhaps higher than ever, don’t lose sight of the importance of human interaction and empathy when it comes to customer experience. The aforementioned PWC study noted that 59% of consumers feel companies have “lost touch with the human element of customer service” when most people want more human interaction. Further factors that drive customers away are unknowledgeable employees, untrustworthiness, unfriendly service and bad employee attitudes.
Unsurprisingly, people need to remain at the heart of any successful customer experience model and strong customer-centered culture. That means that who you hire matters. Assess candidates based on their attitudes, not just their skills. Standardize your hiring and onboarding processes, including background checks, to ensure consistently high standards. For employees who will interact with customers, provide well-rounded training with a healthy mix of product and service knowledge, scenario-based training and soft-skills training.
4. Measure Progress And Celebrate Wins
Along your journey, consider the customer metrics you're assessing and whether they’re truly aligned with customer-centricity. For instance, while speed and ease are both incredibly important for customers, neither should come at the expense of quality interaction. When progress tracking, use the voice of your customers to improve your organization. Dig into customer feedback to understand and fix pain points in their experience that can be addressed with internal process changes, training, alignment, etc.
Continue to measure progress in your internal culture throughout your journey, recognizing and celebrating your wins along the way. This may be through formal recognition, celebrating major accomplishments and milestones or including these moments in the performance review process. Still, it's important to celebrate small wins along the way. Even the simplest gestures make a difference for employees and reinforce the culture you're creating. In fact, Deloitte found that employees actually preferred verbal and written recognition.
While the payoff of becoming a more customer-centric organization will be evident in customers’ perceptions, it goes hand in hand with employee experience, engagement and satisfaction. A reciprocal relationship between happy customers and happy employees will benefit the long-term success of your organization.
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