The sun is out and it is impossible not to notice the smiles and happiness upon people’s sun kissed faces due to the fact that summer (finally!) is in the air. Outside the Symplify office on Drottningsgatan in Stockholm, the beam of the sun has been casting its light on the never- ending stream of the strolling people. After what to me felt like an endlessly long and dark winter, we truly deserve this.

I’ve been contemplating for quite some time on what topic I wanted to touch upon for this week. One topic that has come up a bit in meetings throughout this and the previous week is the rather complex topic of organisational culture. As the CX advocate I am, I would like for this blog post to pair them together, since organisational culture can be a basis for successful impactful work with CX that will drive positive results. 

So, more exactly I would like to take a moment to discuss some of the prerequisites required for a customer centric organisational culture. Before we start, let’s try to define what a customer centric culture is. Let’s ask out trusted ChatGPT:

“A customer-centric culture prioritises the needs and satisfaction of customers above all else, guiding every aspect of the organisation towards understanding, anticipating, and meeting customer needs.”

Yep, that’s it.

These are three, what I would assume to be requirements for an organisation to move towards cultural customer centricity, of course there are several more, but just to give a brief introduction to some of them, let’s see:

• Leadership <3 culture <3 CX

Just like organisational culture is a prerequisite for high-impact CX, leadership that advocates for CX principles is a requirement for creating a customer centric organisational culture. Leadership should be the bearer of the CX banner, and that starts with a clear vision and set goals for the organisation that push the customer-centric agenda, where the customer stands as the focal point of the organisational success. Leadership engagement is crucial to create employee engagement and motivation to steer an organisation towards becoming customer-centred. By leadership being the CX advocates of the organisation, they can provide the organisation with examples of what customer centric behaviours are and make sure to increase the incorporation of the customer in discussions and in communication.

• The customer journey: the focal point of the organisation

Another prerequisite for achieving a customer-centric culture is to have a unanimous understanding of the customer journey. This entails utilising journey mapping to chart all touchpoints and employing the journey as a tool to pinpoint pain points within the process. A customer journey map serves as a powerful visualisation tool, contributing to a comprehensive and shared understanding of the customer’s experience throughout their interaction with the organisation, and where within the customer journey the employees contribute to the value proposition.

• Empathy, empathy, empathy

Empathy towards the user you are designing for is a common starting point in design frameworks such as design thinking or the double diamond framework. Therefore, another requirement for a customer centric organisational culture is to be empathetic towards your customers. In practice, this would mean a genuine interest in, care for, and willingness to go the extra mile for the customer. To do that, the organisation must identify customer needs, understand them and come up with solutions to satisfy their needs. Being an empathetic organisation would also require for empathy to be operationalized within the organisation and in processes. How empathy can be operationalised might be a subject for a future post.

And…

…those were my top three requirements to become a customer centred organisation. Just like the leadership principle at Amazon “Customer Obsession”, we should be obsessed with our customers, “to earn and to keep their trust”, but also make sure to continuously foster a customer centric culture.

Let’s finish this up with one final point and a quote I liked:

• In order to steer the course towards a customer centric organisation, the organisational leadership must be wanting to make that a priority. That is where it all starts.
• “Empathetic people are superb at recognizing and meeting the needs of clients, customers, or subordinates. They seem approachable, wanting to hear what people have to say. They seem approachable, wanting to hear what people have to say. They listen carefully, picking up on what people are truly concerned about, and respond on the mark.” – David Goleman