Customer Culture: A True Competitive Advantage

Customer culture and its importance in business

What is customer culture?

Born from a simple observation, the concept of customer culture is relatively recent: the first operational work dates back to 2015. Customer experience development programs that, despite considerable investments in time, energy and budget, were producing disappointing results.

In researching the causes of these relative failures, researchers isolated a central point in the customer value chain: the low ROI of customer experience programs seemed linked to a lack of internal reflexes to place the customer at the heart of decisions, both on the organizational side in terms of priority management and on the employee side in terms of customer orientation.

Concretely, customer culture aims to develop the customer orientation of the company (i.e. to grow customer reflexes):

• Individual employee values: empathy, listening, autonomy, accountability
• Collective values: leadership drive, employee autonomy and spreading the voice of the customer

“Customer culture should not be approached first from the customer side, it starts internally! Before listening to customers, you must listen to employees. Addressing irritants means first addressing the root causes of customer irritants, killing two birds with one stone.” Arnaud Deschamps, Nestlé Group.

Why is customer culture essential?

Customer culture therefore sits upstream of the customer experience: without customer culture, you will not be able to offer a Wow customer experience in the long run and perform. This is the entire meaning of Guillaume Antonietti’s book “Customer Culture, Succeeding in Your Transformation”, Pearson 2022.

If today, customer culture issues concern both executive management and managers, it is because they realize that you cannot transform an organization solely through standards, processes and KPIs: it is the very culture of the company that is at stake. The only companies that have succeeded in such a customer refocus have done so by tackling shared beliefs and values within their organization, as well as rituals, myths, habits, etc.

All studies converge: only the creation of a true customer culture can transform the company and acquire a lasting competitive advantage.

The benefits are:

• A higher average basket
• More referrals
• Cross-selling
• Lower sensitivity to price increases (price elasticity)
• Better-controlled innovations
• Happier employees in their daily work (Great Place to Work)

COS System, pioneer and number one in customer culture projects

COS System, pioneer and the only consulting firm 100% dedicated to customer culture, has developed exclusive methodologies based on neuroscience to:

• Measure the customer orientation of organizations with precision, with scores across 60 dimensions and a benchmark of more than 50 companies across all sectors
• Measure the customer orientation of each employee to identify the most customer-oriented teams as well as those lagging behind, in order to support them
• Raise awareness among all employees through the proprietary game, La Fresque du Client
• Support management teams to build, steer and animate a transformation plan through customer culture
• Grow customer mindset with the COS In Mind online program:

“The COS IN MIND approach is completely different from all other coaching programs I have followed so far! This methodology, delivered over a 5-week period, allows thoughts and actions to be embedded in our daily work. I also greatly appreciated the support at the beginning, middle and end of the program. We are therefore better prepared to serve our customers well, both in our stores and at headquarters. Our customer culture is much stronger! If you are considering deploying the COS IN MIND program, I recommend it 100%!” Juan Miguel DEL AGUILA REYES, CEO Kiabi Portugal.

The impact of these projects is considerable and even measurable in terms of operational and financial performance, across all sectors and for all types of companies, private or public.

The three pillars of customer culture

Leadership involvement

Customer culture concerns all levels of the company, but the decision and embodiment rest with the Executive Committee. It must indeed drive the project and lead by example beyond internal communication. This can take many forms; here are some examples to illustrate the importance of the Executive Committee in growing customer culture:

• The Executive Committee must explain why it is launching such a project: because it guarantees additional performance and workplace well-being. It must also do everything possible to avoid contradictory directives at the level of line managers: in a siloed organization, these contradictions are the two main destroyers of customer culture in the company.

“If you want to develop a ‘customer culture’ within your company, first and foremost take care of your ’employee culture’!” Pascal Demurger, CEO of the MAIF Group.

• Create a customer culture department reporting to the Executive Committee, separate from the customer experience function. Culture is linked to a mindset, while experience is linked to processes.
• Internal communication must be centered on the fact that customer culture is everyone’s concern: salespeople, marketers, legal teams, accountants, technicians, logistics staff… because everyone plays a role in the organization’s customer value chain. Any break immediately disrupts the underlying virtuous dynamic.
• Executive Committee meetings could always begin with a customer quarter-hour, with an update on irritants and success stories.
• The variable compensation of Executive Committee members and Directors could include a component tied to satisfaction indicators (CSAT), recommendation (NPS), and reduction in complaints (CES).

It is by genuinely championing the project that leadership will be able to instill this customer mindset at all levels of the company. As a result, employees will be far more attentive to customer needs and better equipped to make the right decisions for their satisfaction.

Team accountability and autonomy

This second pillar of customer culture is not necessarily the sole responsibility of HR, since it is more a question of mindset than skills. It is easy to implement training programs with outcome validation, but our real subject lies elsewhere: how do we create and develop customer-oriented reflexes? We believe that line managers are best placed to drive and animate this approach. The actions taken must:

• Make everyone understand that customer culture is everyone’s responsibility in a company: individual commitment is essential for it to take hold. Even positions without direct customer contact have a role to play in establishing a customer culture throughout the entire company.
• Give employees the autonomy needed to make the customer experience memorable, or in the case of friction, keep it at an acceptable level. This can concretely translate into commercial gestures adapted to specific situations and contexts, or the ability to move beyond standard scripts and processes to meet key customer expectations, particularly in cases of dissatisfaction. Line managers, key people in this type of project, must have a certain degree of latitude, otherwise a customer culture project risks becoming ineffective.
• Raise awareness and train teams on the subject to align everyone through La Fresque du Client, a manager’s handbook and ongoing internal activities. There will be no overnight miracle; the approach will be iterative and long-term.
• Recruitment can finally incorporate an individual customer orientation test as a decision-support tool. Since it is more a question of mindset than technical skills, evolving it proves more complex than acquiring new abilities. Qualities such as empathy, listening and autonomy should therefore be prioritized.

The goal is to do everything possible to improve the customer experience across the touchpoints of the customer relationship: pre-sales, during the sale and post-sales.

A “customer-centric” organization

The third pillar is more organizational, because thinking customer goes beyond training customer service advisors to respond to consumers. All employees, not just the customer relations team, must be supported in thinking customer at all times. And to truly think customer, you must:

• Identify and manage customer expectations at all levels: our multiple assignments within very different organizations have shown us that this point is always improvable, either because leadership prioritizes short-term financial performance, or because the organization has forgotten the customer in its processes. Or both! This work on expectations is critical because it forms the foundation of customer experience quality: if I don’t know what my customer wants, I don’t know what I need to make them experience in order for them to be satisfied and to recommend me! And the worst of it is that customer expectations will evolve (they are not fixed) and that competitors could, in turn, reshape them. It is therefore better that this comes from us, not from others.
• Define satisfaction objectives: note that this is not about choosing indicators (KPIs); these are merely the result of the experience lived. It is essential to define objectives, choose how to measure them, share complaints to course-correct and steer this satisfaction. There is no point in tracking my overall NPS if I am not working on my detractors!
• The promise (value offer) must be guaranteed with the objective of going further, i.e. creating delight to foster loyalty and thus trigger a recommendation dynamic.

To illustrate this point, at COS System we often use the coffee example, which allows us to define an expectations matrix based on satisfaction and recommendation data. When I walk into a restaurant to order a sweet coffee, several situations can arise. If I have no sugar, I will be unhappy, and the same applies if the coffee is not good. But if I have sugar, I will not necessarily be delighted, because a sweet coffee is not an offer that exceeds my expectations. However, if my sweet coffee comes with a chocolate (which is not part of the basic offer), I will be delighted. But the absence of chocolate does not create dissatisfaction. With this example, we can understand customer expectations and their consequences in terms of satisfaction and delight.

A truly “customer-centric” approach is therefore essential and constitutes one of the three pillars of customer culture, going well beyond tracking indicators. And every employee, front and back office, has a role to play in the customer value chain.

How to deploy a true customer culture in the company?

Step 1: Measure the level of customer culture in the organization

This involves conducting a comprehensive assessment structured around the three pillars of customer culture detailed above. Without this measurement, it is impossible to isolate barriers, surface the real irritants of the customer experience, or identify blockages and silos. This measurement, called COS Company, forms the foundations of a customer culture project: a starting point. Its construction allows the company to be viewed through a different lens, focusing on employees’ perception of the organization’s customer orientation and measuring the customer orientation of the individuals within it (mindset towards customers).

The resulting diagnostic identifies the various barriers across the 3 pillars: leadership drive, autonomy and accountability, and customer connection. The scores obtained can be enriched with employee interviews or focus groups, as well as customer verbatims from satisfaction surveys and the customer relations center.

This logically leads to a prioritized, assigned and time-bound action plan to deploy.

Each component of the action plan must integrate objectives, but above all the benefits for the customer and the gains for the company. The means to be implemented generally follow quite logically.

Step 2: Launch and steer customer culture initiatives

Following the definition of the action plan, its launch and internal communication must be approached as a moment of truth, like a product launch. The objectives are multiple:

• Display a strong commitment to growing customer culture: leaders are at the helm and will lead by example
• Raise awareness among all employees by presenting the stakes and benefits, particularly by making them understand that this topic is EVERYONE’s concern, especially line managers:

“Either you work directly for the customer, or you work for someone who works for the customer. If you are in neither of these cases, I invite you to ask yourself some questions.” Frédéric Baletti, Malakoff Humanis.

• Detail the project phases to engage them over time
• Present a case study from a company that has already implemented such a project
• Set up a program committee to co-build the project and avoid a top-down effect that weakens the approach

Step 3: Sustain the customer culture project over time

The animation of the project can take multiple forms, but it must rest on several essential principles that determine the impact on the organization, as this is about real transformation, not optimization.

It is important to be aware that this type of project can lead to significant transformations and considerable impacts. For example, if changing the variable compensation model is deemed essential, it is indeed a major managerial, HR and payroll initiative, with all the consequences that entails.

• Avoid falling back into a customer experience project: customer culture acts on the organization and the mindset of employees. This culture then enables an impact on the customer experience, which is processed, scripted and even marketed.
• If leadership does not engage in the project on a daily basis, particularly through immersions, reading customer verbatims and dedicated speeches, the project will be weakened. Leadership must also pay attention to contradictory directives that completely undermine the efforts of project leads: a necessary alignment must be established to carry the same messages with the same principles at all levels of the company.
• To keep the project alive internally, COS System has found that it is essential, especially for network-based companies, that line managers serve as the essential link, a true relay and a key to project success. They are often supported horizontally by a group of ambassadors who communicate, train and accompany.
• The underlying objective is that, ultimately, everyone has understood the importance of the subject and contributes personally, at their own level, to prioritizing the customer in their thinking and behavior.
• There will be no overnight miracle! Customer culture is more of a marathon than a sprint; the approach is long-term because the prerequisite is the evolution of each person’s mindset. It is therefore not possible to tell an employee “love your customers”; they must first understand what loving a customer means, integrate it into their thinking reflexes before being able to live it daily despite their other priorities.

Conclusion

Customer culture is a concept, certainly, but above all a means of increasing company performance and promoting workplace well-being by going beyond customer satisfaction:

“Stop talking to me about ‘customer satisfaction’ and start talking about ‘customer culture’! The first always relies on the same tried-and-tested indicators… The second, on the other hand, is a challenge that we must all commit to tackling every day. It is up to us to revolutionize our practices, our mindset and our measurement tools.” O. GAVALDA, CEO Crédit Agricole ASA.

A great program that goes beyond the standards of traditional customer experience projects, for the benefit of everyone within the company.

Now, change your perspective with COS System!