Start From the Top to Create a Customer-First Mindset

The customer experience. We all know its importance. Without happy customers, our businesses would fail. And our customers won’t be happy without a good customer experience. What creates truly “stand out” brands is an exceptional experience, where customer effort is low, and surprise and delight are high. This means no hurdles to jump through. A consistent experience no matter how or where they interact with a brand. And predicting customer needs before they even have to ask.

Even if support teams are now being thought of as “customer experience” teams, the truth of the matter is, CX is a true team sport — touching every part of the organization. And the most important quality to ensure a positive experience, is by creating a customer-first mindset.

Customer-Centricity Starts From the Top Down

The responsibility of creating an exceptional customer experience bleeds throughout the entire organization, and starts with a customer-first mindset. A customer-first mindset means you put the needs of your customers first. You may want to build a cool new product that will garner a lot of press, but will this be something your customers actually want? You may want to adopt new technology to allow customers to virtually try on your merchandise. But have customers expressed this is a need?

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Always start with the customer in mind when making business decisions. While an idea, strategy or technology may sound brilliant in theory, if the customer feedback doesn’t reflect that, you won’t be leading with a customer-first mindset. In order to legitimately implement this customer-centricity throughout the organization, business must start at the top — with the executive team. Implement these three steps in order to prioritize a customer-first mindset:

1. 1. 1. Change KPIs Across the Business – CX teams often use efficiency metrics to measure success, like response time and resolution time. What if your customers require a higher level of consultative support? In these cases, shorter conversations may actually be working against creating a positive customer experience. Perhaps your product development team has a goal of rolling out a specific number of new products per quarter. It could be more effective to measure satisfaction of current products instead of developing a multitude of new products, to ensure what you are producing fulfills the needs of your customer base.
      2. Educate the Company – Did you know it costs as much as five times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing customer? The success of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70% while the success rate of selling to a new customer can be as low as 5%. The more your business is aware of the importance of churn on company growth, the more they will understand that doing right by your customer base is the quickest way to drive up revenue.
      3. Reward Your Employees — Many businesses reward employees with bonuses based on sales, hitting revenue targets, and completing specific top-down goals. While customer-centricity is directly tied to revenue growth, ensure that the goals you set for your organization are tied to a customer-first mindset. Employees that have shown initiative to put customer needs first should be acknowledged and rewarded.

Want to learn more about why CX is a team sport? Download our complete guide here.