Customer Centric Culture & Innovation
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The document discusses the importance of customer-centricity in organizations, highlighting the need for companies to prioritize customer input and well-being in decision-making processes. It emphasizes leveraging crowdsourcing as a valuable method to incorporate customer insights and experiences to drive innovation and improve services. Additionally, the document advocates for consistent communication of customer-centric values across all levels of the organization to foster a culture that prioritizes customer needs.
Customer Centric Culture & Innovation
- 1. HEAD TO HEAD The impact of interaction Clear Action’s Lynn Hunsaker and Patricia Seybold Group’s Matthew Lees argue the business case for a customer-centric organization. What defines a customer-centric organization, and why is taking a customers. What approaches can companies take to help make customer-centric approach increasingly seen as important? crowdsourcing work for them? Lynn Hunsaker. When the customer’s well-being comes fi rst in your LH. Anytime customers provide inputs, make sure you have a process decision-making, you’re customer-centric. A customer-centric manager in place to act on those inputs and to inform customers of your actions. feels certain that all other interests will be well served as a by-product of A best practice for crowdsourcing is to inform customers in advance of putting the customer fi rst. Round-the-clock two-way communications your process and any limitations and disclaimers. Use the general rules in a wide variety of forums have put customers in the driver’s seat as in- for effective brainstorming. formed, sophisticated and powerful parties in purchase decisions. Fast- My recommendation for innovation research is to focus primarily paced lives, reducing wait times, and services as share-of-wallet have also on the customer’s world, and secondarily on the company’s product, increased for consumers as well as business customers, heightening the service or process. Thoroughly understand the bigger picture of how impact of interactions with companies. the customer is using your offering, and their related challenges, work- arounds, and any excesses or deficiencies, and you’ll fi nd a great deal of Matthew Lees. Th rough the advent of the internet, faster computers and inspiration for innovation. By taking the responsibility to focus fi rst on fast connectivity, people have the ability to communicate with each other their world and connect it to yours, you may fi nd it unnecessary to ask in a way that’s never happened before. The traditional walls of commu- customers to enter your world so intimately and literally. nication with customers are crumbling due to the speed and availability Many researchers have the mistaken idea that customers don’t know of information and information flow and so instead of the center of your or can’t articulate what they want. They found that customers may not universe being your products and expertise it’s about your services and be qualified to make meaningful technical suggestions, or their actual your brand. Customer-centricity is about what your customers and pro- behavior doesn’t match their reported intentions. In reality, customers spective customers are looking to do. do know their own world – it’s a mistake to expect them to know the company’s world. Customers may not be able to articulate a new solution, Crowdsourcing offers a customer-centric approach for tapping into but they can show companies how and why they are getting something the collective experience, knowledge, creativity and skills of your done, their related challenges, work-arounds, and any excesses or defi- 114 www.busmanagement.com
- 2. Lynn Hunsaker is Head of ClearAction consulting and your target market and a thorough understanding of its world, and then an expert in customer-centric determine the required competencies of employees to hire, and their culture, customer experience innovation, employee intrinsic motivators. Nurture customer-centricity by keeping employ- engagement and customer relationship skill-building. She ees continually aware of developments in the customer’s world, and by is author of three handbooks: maintaining a customer-fi rst mindset in all internal discussions, deci- Metrics You Can Manage For Success, Customer Experience sions and activities. Improvement Momentum, and Innovating Superior Customer The vision and values that top management communicates, both Experience. verbally and behaviorally, set the tone and direction for the organiza- tion. The key is consistency – at every opportunity, management should continually communicate the necessity of making it easier and nicer for customers to get and use solutions. Consistency occurs in formal and ciencies of current solutions. Crowdsourcing is a valuable brainstorming informal meetings, written correspondence, external messages and in technique that should be used in conjunction with thorough research of every business process and every management ritual such as perfor- the customer’s world. mance reviews, annual operating plans and performance dashboards. Customer-centricity, as priority number one, must permeate the entire ML. There are crowdsourcing applications out there, and they’re getting business, and be un-challenged by other concerns as the organization’s good traction, and some of them are really terrific. But if you’re a market- primary focus of attention and efforts. ing person or an R&D person and you’re looking to do some crowdsourc- Accountability determines the degree to which customer-centricity ing, even among your employees, you could have the best crowdsourcing takes root. What gets rewarded gets done. Proper balance and wise technology, and it’s not going to be effective if your organizational mind- management of rewards and penalties are extremely important. The set and culture isn’t willing to listen and take some action on what the best planned accountability programs are undermined if group mem- crowd is saying. bers view them as inequitable or unfair, so close monitoring of group With crowdsourcing you need to be much more transparent and member’s perceptions is key. implicitly suggest that you are going to take on board what the crowd is saying. There is an implicit agreement that you will take a consum- ers input seriously and that’s the fi rst step – before technology even enters into the picture. However, you don’t want to over-promise and Matthew Lees is a Consultant let customers think that if they send you an idea, a week later it will and Vice President at the Patricia Seybold Group. turn into reality. He brings over 15 years of experience in helping organizations leverage Who needs to take ownership of a company’s customer community technology to build stronger relationships with customers. initiative? Should this be a departmental or business unit project, or As an analyst in the group’s Strategic Research Service, his does it need more of a company-wide focus? current research is focused on LH. Customer communities may have a wide or narrow scope, which customer communities and social networking. could determine the appropriate owner within the company. A cross- functional discussion should take place before creating a community to determine the company’s strategy and roadmap. Creating a community also establishes expectations among customers, so be sure to carefully plan and to proactively manage expectations of all parties. ML. Customer-centricity is about getting employees, who previously never interacted directly with customers, to engage directly with them. ML. It’s really about being approached in both of those ways by different And so, for the companies that are implementing crowdsourcing now organizations and there isn’t a clear delineation on which of those works and engaging with their customers, they are getting a head start and better. It’s simply that doing something is better than doing nothing, they’re setting up the processes and learning what goes into it. partly because that helps to socialize this within the organization and There are many companies that are setting up innovation centers start to learn about the business practices. and these almost separate groups are charged with thinking about how the entire organization can innovate. Again, whether it’s innovating Any business depends on hiring great people, but customer-centric- products, services, business processes, internal processes, customer ity is particularly dependent on employing and developing people facing processes, processes involving business partners, it’s a question that understand the importance of the business-consumer rela- of how they can innovate more quickly and be more flexible. tionship. How can companies ensure their organizational culture is It’s a kind of centralized approach, and many of these groups are geared towards customer-centricity? looking at crowdsourcing methodologies whether for internal innova- LH. Engagement of employees and customers go hand-in-hand, but it’s tion or for opening up to customers and others outside of the organi- not a chicken-and-egg issue. Always start with a clear identification of zation as opposed to an R&D group. www.busmanagement.com 115