The importance of a Customer-Focused culture

As Kelly Uhlrich, Vice President and General Manager of CX company Humach, explains, “the proper focus and investment of time and budget requires a more strategic approach. It’s not a marketing problem or a technology initiative.”

Authentic customer-focused culture is far more exhaustive than just researching your customer experience or observing a segment of your market. A true customer-focused culture actively involves your entire organization in understanding at each level how to deliver the best customer experience at every turn.

Why is a customer-focused culture important?

1. A customer focus culture improves customer retention.

Customer retention is essential for building residual revenue. It’s also proven to be more cost-effective when compared to acquisition since it’s 6-7x more costly to attract a new customer than retain an existing one. Providing excellent service is necessary for establishing high retention rates. 

24% of respondents in a MyCustomer survey said they’d switch to a different brand after one negative experience.

You should be closer to your customers than any of your competitors. When you develop a customer-focused culture, you invest time and effort in understanding your customers more thoroughly. This also equips you to create tailored experiences that help retain customers for longer.

2. Customer-centric companies are more profitable

Considering the impact customer service can have on retention, it should be no surprise that companies that make their customers a priority are more profitable. Research from Deloitte and Touche found that businesses with a customer-centric focus are 60% better. This directly underlines that the happier a customer is with a brand, the more they tend to purchase. 

In a study, Xerox found that customers rated 6/6 were six times more likely to buy more products than those who rated the brand with a 5/6. 

In this case, just one extra point on Xerox’s rating scale led to a noticeable difference in purchasing habits — illustrating that even a little extra effort could be all it takes to boost your revenue.

How to build a customer-focused culture?

Focusing on your customers may sound like a reasonably straightforward process. But if you’re unsure where to start, the following four steps will give you a clear path towards creating the kind of work culture you want.

Four tips for creating a customer-focused culture 

1. Collect feedback regularly

The first step in developing a customer-focused culture is listening to what your customers have to say. The more you understand your customer, the more focused you’ll be on meeting their needs. There’s a lot of correlation between building a listening culture and a customer-centric culture. So how do you go about collecting your customer feedback?

There are many ways to do this. For customer-facing employees, the most straightforward approach is to ask for feedback during regular interactions. And this doesn’t need to involve a set of scripted questions. Simply asking customers whether they’re satisfied with your company, products, and services is easy to gauge overall sentiment. It can also be a helpful way to collect suggestions to build a customer-focused culture within your organization. Encourage your customer support team to document these suggestions and make it a priority to review them regularly.

You can also take things a step further and reach users without contacting you for help by sending customer surveys. Tools like Typeform make it easy to create surveys that give you valuable insight into your customers. You can use CSAT surveys to gauge your customers’ satisfaction with specific interactions and other aspects of your business. This might sound like a lot if you’re beginning to develop a customer-focused approach. However, as your team gets more comfortable asking for and reviewing customer feedback, it will become a routine — and indispensable — part of your operations. 

Whatever strategy you use to build a customer-centric culture, start by collecting and analyzing data on at least a biweekly basis. After a few months, reevaluate your process to see whether that’s too often or not often enough.

2. Make customer service metrics part of your company goals

Analyzing customer service metrics is a guiding light for your business to achieve its maximum potential.

Two types of customer support KPIs should be a part of any business model: Operational and organizational metrics.

• Operational metrics track and measure the performance of your customer service agents. You’ll find out exactly how many tickets they receive, how many are resolved, etc.

• Organizational metrics focus on customer experience. What do customers think about your product? How happy are they using it? While customer service teams play a crucial role in influencing these metrics, organizational metrics are a sum of parts and contribute to achieving superior customer-focused culture in your organization. 

Another popular customer focussed metric is Net Promoter Score or NPS. This metric is an index ranging from -100 to 100 and indicates the overall sentiment toward your brand. And while it shouldn’t be the only metric you use to measure customer satisfaction, its simplicity makes it ideal for a company-wide goal. Aiming to hit a specific score by the end of the year, for example, can give your team a concrete reason to always put the customer first.

3. Integrate customer-focused culture into your company’s business model

When people think of “customer care,” they only think of a company’s customer support team. But to create a customer-focused culture, it can’t just be a priority for customer-facing employees. Instead, it would help to incorporate this focus into your company’s core values. For example, take a look at Southwest’s mission statement.

The entire thing is about customer service. And considering that Southwest is now the highest-ranking North American airline in terms of customer satisfaction, this approach seems to be working for the brand.

A customer-focused culture delves deeper into understanding how the roles and responsibilities of its employees impact CX. It’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day job requests. However, a customer-focused culture keeps the shared goal of helping customers at the forefront of employees’ minds.

Quick tips to promote customer-focused culture in your organization: 

• Send out a company newsletter on key CX metrics and your company’s performance. This can be done biweekly or monthly across all teams.

• Hold brainstorming meetings once in 6 months with stakeholders and managers across teams for ways to improve CX.

• Kickstart CX refinement projects that directly contribute to NPS scores. 

• Revalidate your customer journey map based on your customer feedback.

• Invest in team communication software to aid employees across teams to communicate and work together efficiently.

4. Make every employee a customer champion

One of the soundest ways to create a holistic customer-centric culture is to encourage every employee to be a customer champion regardless of their team or job function. A customer champion represents customers and their experience in discussions within the company. They’re focused on putting the customer’s needs first and are vested in enhancing the customer expectations at every turn. 

For many businesses, encouraging non-customer-facing employees to focus on customers would represent a significant shift — but it’s a shift that can produce excellent results.  For example, this was the premise behind PayPal’s “Be the Customer” initiative.

Paypal introduced a new work initiative for eight months. They let their non-customer-service employees listen to and analyze customer calls. Later these employees shared their insights with the customer-facing teams. They also encouraged employees across departments to test new PayPal products before selling them to the customer. By directing efforts to build a customer-focused culture within their organization, PayPal’s revenue grew 19% from Q1 to Q2, and its Net Promoter Score reached a new high.

How a customer focus can help your business succeed?

A customer-focused approach can do more for your business than boost your customer satisfaction levels.

1. It’s Essential for Customer Retention

Customer retention is essential for building residual revenue. It’s also much more cost-effective than solely focusing on acquisition, as it’s 6-7x more costly to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing one.  And providing excellent service is absolutely necessary for establishing high retention rates. In fact, 24% of respondents in a MyCustomer survey said they’d switch to a different brand after just one negative experience.

But when you develop a customer-focused culture, you can be confident that no matter which employee a customer interacts with, they’ll be treated as a priority.

2. Customer-centric companies are more profitable

Considering the impact service can have on retention, it should come as no surprise that companies that make their customers a priority are more profitable. In fact, research from Deloitte and Touche found that companies with a customer-centric focus are 60% more profitable. This directly ties to the fact that the happier a customer is with a brand, the more they tend to purchase. In one study, Xerox found that customers who rated them a 6/6 were six times more likely to buy more products than those who rated the brand with a 5.

In this case, just one extra point on their rating scale led to a noticeable difference in purchasing habits — illustrating that even a little extra effort could be all it takes to boost your revenue. Finally, it’s worth noting that a customer focus can help with the lead nurturing process. When you take the time to answer prospective customers’ questions and provide them with the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions, you increase the chances that they’ll convert.

How to build a customer-focused culture?

Focusing on your customers may sound like a fairly straightforward process. But if you’re not sure where to get started, the following 4 steps will give you a clear path towards creating the kind of work culture you want.

1. Collect feedback regularly

The first step in developing a customer-focused culture is listening to what your customers have to say. There are many ways to do this. For customer-facing employees, the most straightforward approach is simply to ask for feedback during regular interactions. And this doesn’t need to involve a set of scripted questions.

Simply asking customers whether they’re satisfied with your company, products, and services is an easy way to gauge overall sentiment. It can also be a helpful way to collect suggestions and constructive feedback. Encourage your customer support team to document these suggestions, and make it a priority to review them on a regular basis.  You can also take things a step farther (and reach users that don’t contact you for help) by sending customer surveys.

Again, these don’t need to be complicated. Tools like Typeform make it easy to create surveys that can give you valuable insight about your customers. From there, you can use CSAT surveys to gauge how satisfied your customers are with specific interactions and other aspects of your business. If you’re in the beginning stages of developing a customer-focused approach, this might sound like a lot.  But as your team gets more comfortable asking for and reviewing customer feedback, it will become a routine — and indispensable — part of your operations.  

2. Make customer service metrics part of your company goals

You likely already have company-wide goals that all of your employees are aware of and work toward accomplishing. For many businesses, these revolve around revenue and growth. But customer service-oriented metrics should also be part of your core goals. One of the most popular of these is Net Promoter Score or NPS. This metric is an index ranging from -100 to 100 and indicates the overall sentiment toward your brand. And while it shouldn’t be the only metric you use to measure customer satisfaction, its simplicity makes it ideal for a company-wide goal.

Aiming to hit a specific score by the end of the year, for example, can give your team a concrete reason to always put the customer first.

3. Integrate it into your company culture

When many people think of “customer care,” they only think of a company’s customer support team. But to create a customer-focused culture, it can’t just be a priority for customer-facing employees. Instead, you need to incorporate this focus into your company’s core values. For example, take a look at Southwest’s mission statement.

The entire thing is about customer service. And considering that Southwest is now the highest-ranking North American airline in terms of customer satisfaction, this approach seems to be working for the brand.

4. Make every employee a customer champion

One of the best ways to create a truly customer-centric culture is to encourage every employee, regardless of their team or job function, to be a customer champion. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a customer champion is someone who “represents customers and their experience in discussions within the company. They’re focused on putting the customer’s needs first and is vested in improving the customer experience at every phase.”

For many businesses, encouraging non-customer-facing employees to focus on customers would represent a significant shift — but it’s a shift that can produce excellent results. For example, this was the premise behind PayPal’s “Be the Customer” initiative.  Over the course of 8 months, the company took many steps to renew its team’s customer focus. This included letting non-customer-service employees listen to customer calls to give them more insight on this side of the business, as well as encouraging employees in all departments to test new PayPal products themselves.

And it worked.  As a result of this initiative, PayPal’s revenue grew 19% from Q1 to Q2, and its Net Promoter Score reached a new high.

Customer-focused culture is a massive aspect of customer experience.

“You can’t put customers first if you don’t know who they are or what they want.”

 – Blake Morgan, CX keynote speaker

A customer-focused culture places the customer at the epicenter of everything the company does. The primary goal of these customer-focused companies is to drive customer satisfaction, not increase profits and build on shareholder expectations. Instead of relying solely on a well-built product, a customer-focused model is much more sustainable because it is more agile and develops with the changes and trends of the customers. 

Building a customer-focused culture isn’t something that happens overnight. It is the secret ingredient for some of today’s most innovative and competitive companies. Organizations must put customers first in everything they do to build customer loyalty and increase growth with dedication and conscious effort.