Shaping a Customer-Centric Culture

Culture as brand. Deliver the right customer experience every time.

A high performing culture exists when the firm’s brand identity is made real to customers through employee actions. When customers come away from each and every experience believing that your company has delivered on its promises, then culture is high performing. Culture as brand increases customer, employee and investor confidence in the future.

Most cultural transformation work misses a critical first step.

When asked what culture means, many business leaders respond with answers such as, “It’s the way we do things around here.” “It’s a reflection of our values.” Or “It’s about our employee value proposition and what makes people want to come to work each day.” While these statements are true, they are the second step. Culture as values or behaviors leaves out the critical component of a customer-centric culture. If culture is to be a strategic tool that can help your organization succeed, it must be firmly linked to your firm brand and your customer value proposition- why your customers choose your business over other alternatives.

Start with the experience you want to create for the customer.

The RBL Group helps your organization build a case for culture from the outside-in, starting with your brand identity and the promises you make to your customers. Once this is firmly defined through research and interviews, you can begin the transformation work that’s necessary to support the right customer experience.

This starts with identifying whether your brand promises are embedded at each customer touch point. To assure a customer-centric culture means that at every interaction, the customer receives the target experience. In order to achieve that, employees must be selected, developed, compensated and retained to embed the right experience for customers at every interaction. From this analysis you can make improvements through better process, organization design, leadership attention and HR practices that stand in the way of the desired experience

Create conditions where employees and customers resonate.

When you treat culture as brand and support the customer experience, employees have a better understanding of the purpose and value of their work. And they become more motivated contributors. Your brand’s reputation is solid and consistent across internal and external audiences, strengthening your market position and further boosting stakeholder confidence.

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