The Top 3 Leadership Moves to Make Your Customer Transformation Succeed

“We have a clear customer strategy, yet it’s so hard to get our people to implement it. To create a customer-centric culture. How do we fix that?”

It’s one of the most popular questions I get on customer transformation.

With most transformation programmes failing to achieve their objective, it’s obvious that the traditional strategy cascade and poster avalanche won’t cut it. It’s not by talking at people that you get them to change their ways. It’s by engaging them in a story that resonates with their values and aspirations.

Which is why I keep repeating my favourite change management quote of all time, from Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry:

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

Put differently, if your people really want to focus on the customer in their hearts, the changes you seek will happen organically.

Every second grade teacher knows this.

Ask kids to learn a chemical formula and they’ll drag their feet. Show them an exploding volcano and ask if they would like to do that too and you’ve got 20 willing volunteers to learn that same formula.

The same applies to business.

If you tell me I MUST hit a score as it will increase company profits, the chances of me being motivated by this are significantly lower than if you get me excited about making a difference, in which the score is a consequence.

Which triggers a new, more important question: HOW DO YOU MAKE PEOPLE YEARN TO BE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC?

It’s clearly not through journey maps, chatbots and surveys. If that were the case, customer-centricity would be a non-issue by now.

As part of the book I’m writing, The Transformation Code, I have come up with a formula for human yearning. Yet, it’s really complex, so still needs simplification.

So, being pragmatic, in this issue of Level Up I'll dip into three actions which I found to be especially effective:

1. Turn your strategy into a story that resonates with the people that need to implement it;
2. Develop company-wide empathy for the customer;
3. Create a customer movement.

I hope you find them of value too.

1. Turn your strategy into a story that resonates with the people that need to implement it

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. While they may matter to you as a leader, no employee really cares about your KPIs, processes, or strategies. The vast majority come to work to make a living for themselves and their family. They stay to feel competent, autonomous, and valued. To make a difference.

Or to paraphrase Dart Lindsley :

as much as you’re hiring them to do a job, they are hiring you(r) job to achieve their own goals.

The implication is that your customer strategy will only be embraced if it directly connects to these goals. To what gets your people out of bed.

This isn’t about coming up with a grand purpose that looks good on posters.

It’s about taking the time to really understand what gets your people to come to work beyond a fair salary. And then, reframe your strategy into a story that resonates with their values, aspirations and beliefs.

After all, while they may not care about a better Net Promoter Score, they may get excited about being the hero who helps a client be more successful, a patient get healthier quicker, or a child experience a fun birthday.

Once your strategic goals align with their personal ones, your people will start acting. Not because you tell them, but because they themselves think it’s a good idea.

How to do this?

• STEP 1: Get in the ethnographers to map the values of your people. Or, if that’s too daunting, study up on human values and find out yourself.
• STEP 2: Use storytelling to replace your traditional stick-and-carrot compliance methods with a compelling vision that connects to your people’s values. Iterate until you get resonance.
• STEP 3: Take time to explain to each team member how their actions directly or indirectly make a difference, especially for those employees who are never in contact with the customers. Oh, and if you cannot explain how a person’s job adds value to the customer, there might be something wrong with the job.

2. Develop company-wide empathy for the customer

Every customer oriented leader wants their people care about the customer. Yet, especially in large organisations, most people have never met or spoken to these elusive beings that live somewhere down the supply chain. They may not even know much about them at all.

The implication of this is both simple and brutal.

As humans, we’re not wired to care much about people we don’t know. Who aren’t part of our tribe. So when setting priorities or designing solutions, we will rely on our own opinion and that of those close to us (our boss?). Those of an? unknown stranger are much less important. Even if that stranger is the one ultimately paying our salary.

To create a customer culture, you need to bring the customer into the lives of your people. You could do this literally, by having meet the customer days. Yet, in my experience, this can get awkward for all involved. Much more practical is to use storytelling, smart questions or even immersive customer walks.

Because once your people see your customers as fellow human beings whose lives they influence, they will start empathising and, … care.

How to do this?

• PATH 1: Humanise your customer communication by translating your customer data into resonant customer stories. I.e. less 3% of deliveries are late and more Six-year-old Suzie didn’t get her birthday gift on time. And yes, this works in B2B too.
• PATH 2: Bring the customer into the business. Highlight customer needs at every occasion. But also ask in every meeting, at every decision, ask: What does this mean for the customer? What is the customer's benefit? How will it make them think? Feel?
• PATH 3: Experiment with empathy walks. Especially if your employee’s reality is far removed from your customer’s, let them experience life from the latter’s perspective. Understanding breeds empathy, which drives action.

3. Create a customer movement.

Every culture is shaped by movements. Years ago, we thought it was normal to smoke in restaurants or wear fur coats. Today, this has become unacceptable in many places. This didn’t happen overnight. It started with a few activists who promoted a new idea, which gradually got adopted by ever more people. Until it became the norm.

The same applies to any ‘next level’ customer thinking or culture you want to introduce into your business.

It’s not because you mandate that the customer is our #1 priority, that everyone will change their ways. If only because a lot of the legacy processes, KPIs and established behaviours in your business will tell them to maintain the status quo.

The answer is to create a customer movement. To identify and support the customer activists in your business and help them succeed, so that more people want to want to be part of the new way of thinking. Until it becomes self-propelling.

How do to this?

• STEP 1: Once you have defined what a customer-centric culture looks like, identify those people in the business who already embody these values and behaviours.
• STEP 2: Celebrate their successes, showcasing the benefits of customer-centric action. This will encourage others to join the ones that have taken the customer-centric leap (cf. The law of preferential attraction).
• STEP 3: Create pathways to help more employees join the movement, while making it easy for those how have already joined to succeed. This may require eliminating any stupid rules, systems and metrics your business may have installed (yes, this will hurt).

To conclude

I don’t know whether storytelling, empathy and movement creation are part of your current customer transformation programme.

• If they are, I’d love to hear about it. Either comment below or DM me! I’d love to learn from you, and perhaps I have a few suggestions you may find valuable too.
• If not, I recommend you start experimenting. Especially in a world where customer programmes are increasingly reduced to scores, bots and journey maps, a truly human touch is more important than ever to encourage your people to care about and act on customer needs.

You’ve got this ??

This article first appeared on: https://www.alainthys.com/blog/the-top-3-leadership-moves-to-make-your-customer-transformation-succeed

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