#6 Customer-centric culture, Star Wars NPS guide
Thoughts on establishing a customer-centric culture I was speaking to about 20 country managing directors and function leaders of a major multinational in Vienna earlier today. The subject was how to establish a customer-centric culture. It can be quite challenging in a multinational, depending on how the various managers of businesses, functions and geographies matrix together. Businesses, functions and geographies tend to establish their strategies and initiatives somewhat independently of each other. If you ever find yourself in a group of such leaders, a nice way of cutting the ‘denial stage’ short is to go to each of their intranet pages in advance, and copy down what they list as their top priorities. It is even better to get their latest all-employee email. Do customers make the formal list? In most companies, you get a mix of “of course everyone is responsible for customer experience improvement” and a lack of it being on anyone’s formal priority list. In multinationals, employees in an individual country will usually read whatever the local country MD writes, and listen to what he or she says, no matter where they formally report. The reason is that everyone’s pay and conditions are local. An exception is the corporate HQ country, where employees will pay more attention to the CEO. Elsewhere, no matter what the corporate structure is, local customers will turn to the local country leadership whenever things go wrong. I will always remember a story the UK MD at HP told about a consumer showing up at his private home with a non-functioning printer, for example. The local country MD is the media spokesperson, and has to chair the local Workers Council, if there is one. They set the tone for the country. This means that local customer-centricity needs to be driven by the MD. Internal and external communication about priorities and initiatives needs to be brief and consistent. Ideally, it should be similar in all countries, and at the corporate level too. It can’t be identical everywhere because small countries do not have the resources needed to implement as many initiatives as large countries can. Our latest blog posts Older posts are of course still available on the blog page.
Notable customer experience items from other sites Apparently, mentioning Star Wars makes people want to read this NPS guide Paul Campillo, Kreg Franco and Ester Antolino collaborated to create The Star Wars Guide to the Net Promoter Score for the Typeform site. It is nicely illustrated and makes a good read. The title is a little misleading in that it covers the whole system, quite briefly, and entertainingly, of course. May the Promoters be with you!
Inc. Magazine – 6 Shocking Tools Every Customer Service Rep Needs From Your Company… Not really ‘shocking’ but I suppose using the word in the headline made me read the article. A good read, focusing on the emotional support needed to perform well in a service center. The article is here. Looking forward I have not been able to get the second post in the behavioral economics series out today. It will be out in the next few days, I promise. The subjects are price gouging and revenge. Peter has lined up a particularly incisive drawing that seems to be about a certain Martin Shkreli. Thanks for reading. Please share with your friends and colleagues and encourage them to sign up for the newsletter here. Spreading the word is important to me. I have avoided doing annoying things like having subscription popups on the website, so am dependent on you. Finally, please feel free to change or cancel your subscription using the link below. You can also email me, Maurice FitzGerald, at mfg@customerstrategy.net. To change your subscription, click here.
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