The Imperative of Customer Culture: The Key to Long-Term Business Success
Most businesses claim to have some level of customer focus. Their sales and marketing teams try to identify target audience needs. Customer service staff aim to quickly resolve issues.
But very few companies have a truly embedded, organisation-wide customer-centric culture that puts the audience at the heart of all decisions across departments.
Experts argue that transformative benefits come to enterprises that move beyond superficial notions of customer focus to install an authentic culture oriented around consumers.
In their book “The Customer Culture Imperative” Linden Brown and Chris Lee have assisted over 100 organisations to make deep-seated cultural shifts focused on the customer. These seasoned change agents contend that establishing new habits across large systems is similar to adopting a fitness regimen. With continued repetition, customer-aligned behaviours become instinctive muscle memory.
The authors have distilled installing a customer culture down to 7 key disciplines that fuel market-leading enterprises:
- Personally Committing to Customers
Success starts with senior leaders that embrace customer-centric values then model those beliefs daily through their own actions.
- Strategically Aligning Around Target Segments
Rather than a vague intent to serve all buyers, anchor around understanding and delivering for clearly defined cohorts.
- Crafting a Customer-Focused Vision
Articulate an aspirational purpose for the company that situates clients at the very core and provides direction.
- Defining Core Values and Expected Behaviours
Outline clear guidelines regarding customer treatment expectations and boundaries.
- Shaping Business Strategy Around Customers
Ensure audience perspectives feed all aspects of offerings, operations and systems.
- Designing Customer-Focused Processes
Engineer touch points, workflows and policies to match user needs instead of internal convenience.
- Tracking Progress Via Customer Metrics
Gauge the right indicators to monitor desired cultural traits and business outcomes.
Why Customer Culture Matters
Some leaders question whether all the effort to nurture customer-centric habits is worthwhile. But studies consistently reveal companies exhibiting strong customer culture reap compounding benefits, including:
More innovation success: Maintaining an external orientation and direct user insights fosters developing offerings perfectly matched to market needs.
Increased sales growth: Fulfilling target audience wants and seamlessly delivering on promises earns credibility driving referrals and repurchases.
Improved profitability: Eliminating waste by aligning systems around actual consumer desires reduces costs long term.
Boosted retention levels: Creating perceived value and positive experiences cements durable emotional connections and loyalty.
Greater employee satisfaction: Rallying all personnel around a shared purpose provides meaning and camaraderie.
Principles for Change
So why don’t more organisations demonstrate deeply embedded customer alignment? Culture shifts are notoriously tricky, usually requiring a multi-year commitment.
Brown and Lee emphasise that installing new habits demands consistency applying several principles:
Start at the Top
C-suite leaders must internalise then tirelessly communicate the vision. Only then can messaging cascade through management tiers.
Train Skills
Teach employees at all levels the attitudes, competencies and tools to apply customer-centricity in their specific roles.
Cascade Through Culture
Institute the values across people practices like recruiting, onboarding, reviews and rewards systems.
Break Down Silos
Ensure collaboration across isolated sales, marketing, product and service teams via workshops, cross-functional projects and rotating staff.
Practice Patience
Expect multi-year journeys retraining organisational muscle memory while tracking incremental advances.
Pioneering Examples
Amazon stands among the most truly customer-focused brands on Earth, staying fixed on users despite waves of criticism. Founder Jeff Bezos simply explains “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts.” He insists “the customer is always right”, empowering front-line personnel to drive resolutions.
The Virgin Group also maintains an unwavering customer devotion across its airline, media, telecom and financial companies. Swashbuckling British billionaire founder Richard Branson sees himself as the “customer’s champion”. He preaches “if you put your staff first, your customers second and shareholders third, effectively everyone benefits.”
Leaders seeking to leave legacies aim to balance long-run value for clients and communities with shareholder returns. Howard Schultz resisted instant remedies as Starbucks CEO, doggedly transforming operations to improve consistency and speed. In the process, he resuscitated business growth while advancing societal goals like access to education.
The Ultimate Business Imperative
Installing an authentic customer culture demands substantial effort but enables market pre-eminence, growth and profitability over generations not quarters.
That’s why Brown and Lee assert “Customer culture is as fundamental to business performance as breathing is to living.” Without the continual exchange of deeply understanding users then responding to their overt and latent needs, enterprises quickly asphyxiate in today’s competitive climate.
Leaders seeking to leave legacies now face a choice – succumb to short-term Wall Street pressure tactics or make the harder choice to build enduring audience-aligned organisations.
A customer centred culture doesn’t happen overnight but compound exponentially if deliberately nurtured. Does yours reflect what the market wants and expects? If not, what shifts might be overdue?