Customer-Centered Culture: Where Do We Go From Here?

If you’ve stayed with us over the last few weeks, it should be overwhelmingly evident why customer focus, customer experience, big data, satisfaction surveys, and related efforts to achieve outward-looking excellence have such a disappointing record of success. All depend on knowing who the customer truly is in every context, making sure the end-users (versus brokers) have the power to change the design of products and assuring customer priorities get uncovered, measured, and improved.

Success is a matter of changing the culture of the enterprise. The 6 Levers and an underlying system for transformation are necessary elements to employ. Considering the examples of eye-popping results that are achievable within two years, and then can be sustained, we can reasonably expect similar success.

The last two Levers are a good place to end. The first is assumptions, of which there are two kinds. Inspiring and audacious leaders use aspirational assumptions to communicate a compelling vision of the possible. Putting a man on the moon with a safe return, delivering user-rated products routinely within two days of placing the order, and doing self-diagnosis of an infectious disease with your cell phone are such examples. Others called it pie in the sky, giving all the reasons those outcomes were unobtainable.

The nay-saying barriers a leader will listen for and seek to crush are called Vital Lies. These are constraining assumptions about what cannot be done. They include self-deception, denial, myth, rationalization, and excuses. Vital Lies are widely believed but have no basis in fact. One of the most frequent is “we can’t control that.” The beautiful thing about such an assumption is that absolves the believer from the necessity to take any action. So it also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The leader using the assumptions lever will vigorously state his or her vision of what is possible and challenge the Vital Lie believer to bring forth evidence to support that possibility. It can be amazing how easily the facts will emerge to prove the leader’s view.

In the final analysis, the last lever is the one most telling about the direction, pace, and effects of any anticipated transformation initiative. Modeling is rooted in our behavior. When we model the desired behaviors we wish to see in others, we can name the specific products we create (or, when things with it go wrong, we are the ones who get blamed), name the end-users, brokers, and fixers for that product, know what those varied customers have as highest priorities for that product and are working to close the gaps.

Modeling involves many other elements, and a critically important one is to align recognition and consequences to the behaviors we want to encourage or extinguish. The 6 Levers will enable you to turn the promise of the customer-centered culture into the real model of excellence you have been dreaming of.

We welcome the discussion, whether here on LinkedIn, or offline.

List of resources highlighted in this series:

Customer Satisfaction Policy - https://www.c3excellence.com/customer-satisfaction-policy/

Customer-Centered Self-Assessment (C3 IQ) - https://www.c3excellence.com/product/customer-centered-self-assessment/

Are Your Surveys Only Suitable for Wrapping Fish - https://www.c3excellence.com/product/customer-satisfaction-surveys/

Voice of the Customer in a Widget-Free World - https://www.c3excellence.com/product/voice-of-the-customer-in-a-widget-free-world/

Mastering Excellence: A Leader’s Guide to Aligning Strategy, Culture, Customer Experience & Measures of Success - https://www.c3excellence.com/methodology/mastering-excellence-leaders-guide/

Vital Lies - https://www.c3excellence.com/methodology/vital-lies/