Customer culture: being authentic

The notion of customer culture will not resonate the same if you are a customer or a business executive. The brand, the image of the company must be authentic.

The client will demand authenticity, integrity and experience with the brand. While customer culture will take the company to the frontiers of digital and business, forcing it to rethink its organization to put the customer at the center.

By opting for a customer culture strategy, strategic management will take with it employees, customers and suppliers on an experiential journey where each will learn from the other.

What has changed so that the customer is at the heart of the company’s concerns?

In 1999, Naomi Klein, Canadian journalist set out the bases of an alter-globalization economy in her book No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies

This movement began in the 90s by affirming that another world was possible and indicating that a balance could be found between the global economy and respect for all (human rights, nature, citizens…). It invites brands to be responsible for their actions and to change the conditions in which they produce.

With the Internet and social networks, this movement has taken on a considerable scale, shifting the consumer from the tyranny of brands to a reasoned consumer who must be listened to and taken into account, if you want your digital reputation, your e-reputation to be good.

The motivations of strategic management for a customer culture

Being visible has become with the advent of digital a key development axis for companies.

The notoriety of the company, its image, its DNA are exposed over the discussion walls in social networks. Everyone likes to express their point of view, the data circulates freely, without the company being able to really control this information.

The customer culture of the twentieth century oriented product quality is gradually turning towards the quality of data, which is more volatile.

It is a real experience with the brand that the customer expects. The customer exposes himself through the brand and plays with it. In return, he expects the brand to reduce its carbon footprint, do not use service providers and suppliers who hire children, that the products offered are meaningful in line with its / these values. “Just do it”, “because you are worth it”, are a few slogans marking this change which turn the product culture into a customer culture. The customer does not hesitate to give his opinion on everything and is now organizing himself as a regulator to put pressure on the brands and make them evolve towards an eco-responsible economy.

The customer will choose his products based on the authenticity of the brand, the company’s commitments and the behavior of its employees and suppliers all over the world.

The customer becomes a real stake for the company, because he is a key player in its e-reputation. To follow its reputation and the data dispersed on the web, the company must organize itself. Its answer will therefore be, initially, digital (see our articles on digital transformation.)

Isolated attempts are too similar to web marketing campaigns, rarely followed by those who make the company’s digital reputation like: customers, employees, influencers, partners.

Therefore, top management, strategic management must question itself. It is on the organizational level that the company will be able to mobilize all employees, customers and partners. This revolution, also called customer experience, will bring about profound changes in management. (see our articles on strategic management and in particular management and leadership)

Customer-centric, customer experience: what criteria should be taken into account in customer culture?

The client will measure the integrity of the brand and evaluate it in real time. It reverses the relationship between the consumer and the company in a lasting way.

Each customer, or, for the company, each customer segment, will wait for his expectations to be met: the time and effort he spends to obtain the resolution of his problems, to listen to his needs … read also Starting with the customer.

The company will then enter the chain of relationships described below:

Integrity will create trust, establish the reliability of the relationship and the authenticity of the speech. The company will then gain reputation and contracts.

culture client : être authentique. C'est le point d'équilibre de votre réputation et de vos savoir-faire d'entreprise.

Havard Business magazine has chosen this theme for the front page of its October-November 2020 magazine with loyalty, the new customer El Dorado.

Author : Dominique Popiolek-Ollé, Transmutation leader, Agile Executive Coach, Founder of In Imago, management consulting and disruptive transformation.