During a learning expedition, I was fortunate to have the top 10 of the management committee of a large company for a workshop discovering Startup practices. The objective for me was to make them discover the customer journey with regard to their corporate advertising disseminated on social networks.
Using legos, the managers identified the flaws in the process of receiving customer requests in relation to their corporate advertising, then they built the process adapted and more suitable to their advertising.
Well believe it or not the managers did not appreciate the experience. They wanted to live a life in my startup life and not be confronted with their reality. The use of tools is reserved for their employees, not them!
Obviously, the exercise with Top Management did not change anything in the customer journey. It remains the same, yet the company still displays “Customers Centrics”.
Definition
Customer culture is the set of values and beliefs of a company reflected in the attitudes and behaviors of employees in order to ensure customer satisfaction in a sustainable manner.
Why implement a customer culture?
Consumers express their opinion, are daily actors in the brands they acclaim, sometimes even going so far as to oblige brands to be responsible for their actions. This becomes an important purchase criterion.
See file of A responsible brand of Yves Puget and Stéphane Brunerie
What are the obstacles to a customer culture?
1-The first is the ability of everyone to question their way of thinking. We think of tasks in a process, or product, or customer acquisition strategy … We don’t think of waiting times, fluidity of journey, customer services. Being a centric client is like thinking backwards … starting from the client dream without any preconceived idea except that he will enjoy working with us.
2- Customer segmentation becomes a perilous exercise when you personalize it and then go out to question him about his expectations. The expectations are so far from what we imagined, and the needs multiply according to the number of customers questioned. We must therefore choose which target we wish to reach, and pivot our strategy to meet their needs.
3- The entire organization of the company is impacted by customer culture, including information systems, CRM, in particular. The implementation of this culture requires opening up the organization, and following an end-to-end customer segment.