Five, er, Two, uh, ONE Top Attribute of Customer-Centric Companies
/The Product Experience Podcast recently did it’s first ever two-part podcast, with Dan Harris from CX Partners, breaking down the findings of CX Partners recently released State of Customer Centricity Report. The podcast, and (freely available) report contain some great insights on attributes of the best-performing large organizations.
The report surveyed 110 large (average employees 24K), established (10+ years in business) companies in the EU to understand the impact of customer-centric alignment on revenue growth.
Company customer-centric maturity was assessed against five factors of maturity - People, Process, Governance, Facilities, and Communication. They found that companies that score highest on customer centricity experience much higher YoY revenue growth, while recording higher employee satisfaction and demonstrating the ability to implement change faster than the companies at the bottom of maturity.
Five Key Attributes of Highly Customer-Centric Companies:
They decentralize control
Data drives decision-making - including customer stories
They prioritize the employee experience
They adopt a customer-centric org chart
They communicate relentlessly
The entire report is solid, and worth reading especially when considering the significant inertia working against customer centricity in the large company. But two attributes stand out to me as seminal, and durable; Data-Driven Decision Making, and Relentless Communication. When planning a transition to a more customer-centric organization, these are the critical starting points. You won’t have effective decentralization of control, if you can’t communicate the direction reliably and repeatedly. You can’t implement the more advanced customer-centric org attributes if your teams aren’t focused on data in decision-making. You have to learn and develop these first.
In the podcast, Dan goes one step further to emphasize relentless communication above all. I can’t disagree. This includes ensuring insights gained from team customer interaction is communicated up, and strategy and vision is communicated across. “Great communication has a compounding effect”.
In my own experience this can be hard, because honestly as a product or business leader - when done well you should sound like a broken record. If you aren’t occasionally questioning the repetition of your vision, you aren’t repeating it enough. I once asked a CTO why he chose to repeat the most basic elements of his strategy over and over. “Because people leak” was his answer. He wanted to be sure everyone understood the core elements of the mission, vision, and values. And he knew that repetition was the best way to keep it in focus.
In my own experience - relentless repetition has an additional benefit - I’ve found it let’s you collect and re-share customer stories gathered from across the organization that illustrate the mission, vision, and values.
If you want to improve outcomes in a large organization - the report (and podcast) is definitely worth a read (and listen).