Customer Centered Organization, a Winning Strategy

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It is a challenging strategy.

Let’s elaborate such an important move, what you do, how and why.

There are several ways you can implement this strategy.

Let’s start by understanding better your customers, their preferences, the way they spend their money, the way they do their business, they treat their customers, their moments of truth with their customers. 

This line of thoughts will already give you a fair place ahead of your competitors specially thinking about the future and the sustainability of your business.

If it is good for the customer, it has to be good for you. If your customer business grows, you must follow and grow too. You have just to figure out how, find the balance. 

As you want to understand them better you will treat them better, so let’s have a good support team, with autonomy to deal with the customer, with tools which allow them to be comprehensive in their actions, with support from internal supporting areas, shorting cycles and providing quick and effective solutions to the customers.

A customer centered organization provides an “excellent customer journey” while they are interfacing with you, so make sure you analyzed each step of this “journey” and created a way to manage the entire process allowing you to be on time reactive and preventive.

Understand that customer journey is “measured” by feelings, emotions, and perceptions in all interactions. Every detail counts.

Important points you shall consider and be your core business requirements:

· Organization / people passionate on customer comes first

· Focus on what customer needs

· Build relationship, confidence, trust

· Strategies on creating and keeping profitable and loyal customer

· Lead from the top with a customer focused approach

· Empower the front-line

· Encourage right behavior

· Engage supporting operations

As I said, it is challenging and you might have difficulties to implement, such as:

· Functional silos preventing customer data sharing

· Culture not aligned around customer needs

· Missing key technology platforms to manage data

· No common definition of customer centered organization

· Support not equipped to manage customer issues

· Insufficient expertise in data analysis

· Organization focused on sales before customers

If you really want to succeed with your customers and promote a sustainable business, you must roll up your sleeves and face each of these points.

Set up a process / system, which you can collect as much data as possible from your customers and transactions, develop a CRM system, and a big data analysis platform. This will allow you to dive into the relationship, improve your services and products and create new services/business fronts.

If you run a more complex business, which depends on a supplier’s network, do not forget to make sure they are on the same mindset. Although you have done a lot, you may be behind on the eyes of the customer because of a weak supplier network integration.

The network must share the same:

· Vision

· Strategic Intent

· Behavior

· Technology

· Organization

· Processes

· Metrics

To close with golden key create a “Voice of the Customer” program in your company, which will then guarantee the most effective results for your business. 

Some examples:

· Regular Customer Surveys with the feedback to all participants and corrective actions management

· Customer Account Management practices

· Customer Focus Groups to assess specific issues

· Customer Steering Group with the leading people to discuss strategies and future

· Customer Success Executive Board

· Customer Success / Satisfaction KPIs shared by all internal supporting areas linked to individual variable payment programs.

· Partner with the customer on his operation and learn with him

Risks and opportunities will be found on both sides, if you are working closely with your customer and your suppliers’ network, everybody will win.

Remember customer can change its supplier; supplier cannot change its customer.

Feb 2019