Here’s How to Achieve Total Customer-Centricity

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When I walk into a company and interview stakeholders about their customers, they tell me about these beautiful, fleshed-out personas.

That’s wonderful, except when customer personas differ from department to department – they're all supposed to be serving the same customer!?

Yikes. This makes it impossible to have a customer-centric company and culture.

During this week’s livestream, I explored what “customer-centricity” is and why all departments within a company must put the same customer first.?

How? Well, first you must understand your customer as a whole person, including their needs and the context of their lives. Unfortunately:

Most companies aren’t focused on the whole customer.

Companies push back against being fully customer-centric because they say they are not ready. Their excuses? They have to first gather data into a central warehouse. Or they must hammer out agreements about customer relationship “ownership” with other departments. There’s a whole list of reasons given that explain why they settle instead for a fragmented, siloed, product-oriented way of thinking.

My research has shown that the number one thing driving customer-centricity is culture. It's a mindset and a belief that the customer must be the center of everything you do as an organization. If your understanding of that customer is fragmented, then your organization follows a fragmented approach. Makes sense, right?

But, when your strategy and culture are geared toward the whole customer, everything changes. So:

How do you become truly customer-centric?

It's not about being possessive about your customers or hoarding hard-won data.

Many departments resist talking to each other about synergies between their products and services. Think about banks: They might have a mortgage customer who would also be a great candidate for wealth management services. But the two sides never talk!

They're not asking, "Where are the overlaps? Where can we collaborate and help each other grow? How can we create more loyalty with our customers by simply connecting things better within our organization?"

But they should be asking these questions. Unless you identify and address underlying cultural issues that stand in the way, you’ll never get started on the road to achieving full customer-centricity. A strong culture enables these tough conversations to take place, paving the way for the hard work to actually happen. Because otherwise, there is little incentive for siloed organizations to change their fragmented, disconnected ways.?

Here’s how to start transforming into a customer-centric organization:?

• Commit to the whole customer. Take all the disparate ideas of the customer and unify them into one vision. Ensure every single member of your organization is serving the same vision and understands that customer on a fundamental level.
• Deeply understand who the whole customer is and gather data from different places. This is where culture is essential. To break down barriers, we have to build trust and be willing to share data. Disruptive leaders need to prioritize creating connections between business units and opening windows between silos. Get people talking to each other, sharing information, and collaborating. That’s how you’ll drive impact, growth, and loyalty.??
• Redefine success. If you are what you measure, then defining success with metrics like product sales growth or department-specific goals may not be looking at the whole customer. Instead, redefine success and outline metrics to measure your success in centering the whole customer.
• Think about how you organize. There are three ways organizations can structure to achieve customer-centricity. You might adopt a structure for cross-functional customer insight, so you have different functions with a primary focus. Or you could create a digital customer experience organization that reports directly to the CEO and coordinates all the customer experience activities within those lines of business. Another option is to build a transformation management office, which will help you develop activities and prioritize actions that consider the whole customer. Learn more about these three structures in Prophet’s report “Executing Customer Centricity”

The critical thing is to make sure there’s communication and accountability.

Who will be the voice of the whole customer? Unless the customer feels like they have a voice and the organization fully sees them, they will go somewhere else.

If your company has a transformation office or is considering establishing one, I hope you’ll join me next Tuesday, December 7 at 9 am PT / 12 pm ET. I’ll be discussing why the Office of Transformation Management itself needs to transform and become a permanent part of organizations. I’ll see you then!

Your Turn

How are you approaching customer-centricity in your work? How are you creating incentives for people to think about the whole customer, rather than just one side of them? Maybe this is something you haven’t considered before. I'd love to know your thoughts!

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