.) Richard Branson is also famous for saying, \u201cClients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.\u201d Both of these reinforce the same idea that organizations need to treat employees well so they will treat your customers well. In Natural Customer-Oriented organizations, we see a consistency of treating people like humans and valuing them highly, whether they are customers or employees. <\/span><\/p>\r\nArea #2: Culture and Leadership<\/b><\/p>\r\n
When we assess an organization for Culture and Leadership, we want to know if the idea of putting the customer at the center of everything comes down from the top. We assess this area for customer orientation is to ask how much time the senior managers spend with customers. If the answer is never, then we know that the organization is Na\u00efve. If it\u2019s a couple of times of year senior managers interact with customers, then Transactional. Enlightened organizations have a more regular interaction between customers and senior management, and Natural organizations interact all the time. In other words, the more contact senior managers have with customers directly, the more it shows that an organization values customers. <\/span><\/p>\r\nFor me, senior managers must do this because it is easy to lose touch with the reality of the business without regular interaction with customers. Without that time on the front lines, senior managers don\u2019t understand the problems, leading to decisions that are not good for customers. Unfortunately, we know from the concept of Confirmation Bias that senior managers will think they know what\u2019s going on with customers, but they won\u2019t. In the past, we have tried exercises to get senior management back in touch with customers. One of them was getting the same number of customers in a room as senior managers and then having them talk for a few minutes, like speed dating but for customer interactions. Another way to keep senior managers in touch is to task them with customer complaint management every month to see the problems for themselves rather than isolating them in their ivory towers. <\/span><\/p>\r\nAnother way I like to assess the Culture and Leadership area for an organization is to look at the position of Customer Experience issues on a team meeting agenda. Na\u00efve organizations wouldn\u2019t have it on the schedule at all. Transactional organizations would have it, but at the end; then they can cut it if they run out of time. Enlightened organizations would move it up to the middle of something. In contrast, Natural organizations would lead the meeting by talking about the latest customer feedback voice or Net Promoter Scores<\/span>\u00ae<\/span> or how customers feel.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\nAnother example of assessing Culture and Leadership is the degree to which they define culture. It surprises me how often organizations do not express their culture. So Na\u00efve organizations wouldn\u2019t have it represented, and it wouldn\u2019t be on their radar that it should be. Transactional companies would also not have it defined but would at least know they probably should. Enlightened organizations would be working on defining it already. Natural organizations would have it defined and so engrained in the team that it would be cultish. It isn\u2019t something that employees have to pretend to be a part of or change their mindset in the parking lot before they get out of their cars, either. Employees fit into the culture and are part of the family.\r\n<\/p>
So, to summarize, there are four customer orientations that most organizations have, which include Na\u00efve, Transactional, Enlightened, and Natural. Then, nine areas make up those orientations. Today, we touched on a couple with People and Culture, which are two significant areas for any organization. I hope that this exercise inspires you to consider your organization and where it fits into these orientations and areas. The best thing you can do for your organization\u2019s Customer Experience is to get into a mindset to move your company to a Natural place that puts the customer at the center of everything you do. <\/span><\/p>\r\nThere you have it. No promotions, no gimmicks, just good information. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\r\nThink reading is for chumps? Try my podcast, <\/span><\/i>The Intuitive Customer<\/i><\/b> instead. We explore the many reasons why customers do what they do\u2014and what you should do about it. Subscribe today <\/span><\/i>right here<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty years working in Customer Experience taught me that it\u2019s about a mindset. The mindset leaks out into the organization, recruitment processes, measurement programs and eventually becomes your organization\u2019s culture. The mindset becomes \u201cthe way w…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6479,"featured_media":994938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[128,84,14,92,83],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6479"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=998546"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":998588,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998546\/revisions\/998588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/994938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=998546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=998546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=998546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}