Customer Experience - Cultural Alignment Vs. Lip-Service

Most large organizations spend large sums of money on developing guiding principles of corporate culture – mission and vision statements, high cost training/grooming programs in addition to other Quality and HR spend and, last but not the least, the huge sums of money paid to external “experts” who are supposed to create magic. While most of this spend is well intentioned, the outcomes are mostly quite destructively disruptive and most of what remains after the battles have been fought and paid for is a wide lip-service campaign – banners, posters, videos and the whole nine yards; without any actual improvement in the level of customer experience.

In my previous blog on the subject on how customer experience is a fusion of Cultural Alignment and Proactive Design, I spoke about how great customer experience is not as objectively measurable as we would like to believe. It is really a function of every person in the organization the customer is interacting with, having a strong belief in the well-being and benefit of the customer in addition to a way of work that is personalized to the context of the customer as against by randomly sampled survey responses.

Most Customer Experience improvement programs in companies are designed around building a broadcast based multi-channel communication effort towards the organizational frontline, based on a limited perspective that a certain list of things, based on surveys and focus groups, that form the core of what customers are expecting. We discussed earlier how the expectation of customers is determined by the context of the interaction. Hence, any program designed on the assumption of a sample based feedback mechanism will have short terms impacts, at best. Most often however, it leaves a trail of confusion amongst the company frontline and things tend to go backward than making any meaningful move forward.

The most important aspect of developing a corporate culture is to realize that every team within any organization will impact, directly or indirectly, the experience of the customer. This therefore requires that every department is shaped, by the nature & flow of processes and the nature of people, keeping in mind that the end recipient is the customer. Whether you are tightening screws on hardware, typing in customer address and phone numbers or actually speaking to the customer. The accurate fulfillment of what each individual does will impact the customer in some degree. Hence, everyone must be aligned to the same principles. 

The second most important thing is to ensure that the bridge between agreement and alignment is eliminated. Most managers and their respective reportees agree that customer comes first. But when actual execution is at stake, more tactical and cost centric measures take priority, thus leaving the importance of meeting a customer’s expectations as an agreed good to have – seriously short of a must have that everyone aims to achieve FIRST.

The last, and possibly the most important realization is the toughest to swallow, especially at the senior management level where the dollars and percentages of the short term tend to drive decision making. Great Customer Experience does not walk in parallel with continued pressures on reducing cost. If you want cheap, cheap is what you will get, and most often, cheap is not great. The ability to understand every customer’s context and design solutions and products to be able to cater to it, will cost money in the short term. However, once institutionalized, the long term benefits in the dollar and percentage terms multiply. Manifold.

And therein lie the secrets to the development of successful corporate cultural.

1. EVERYONE must be aligned to the same principles.
2. Meeting a customer’s expectations is a must have that EVERYONE aims to achieve FIRST.  
3. Great Customer Experience does not walk in parallel with continued pressures on reducing cost.

One last thing – you know your organization best. So, while frameworks and other 3rd party models are a great way to take a fresh look at what you are good at and draw a path towards greatness, it is generally counter productive, much like customer experience in itself, without context. If your culture is working as is, it is the right place to be and let no one, no matter how well recommended, tell you otherwise.