Every person at a company, from engineering to HR to sales is, at the end of the day, serving the customer. Some are just more direct about it than others. We believe that creating a customer centric culture is ultimately the best way to both make build a better product, and keep employees happier.
According to recent research, SurveyMonkey research report, the threat of imminent attrition is high: 51% of employees state that they would take another job if it was offered, and 48% of people don’t see a clear path for themselves at their current company.
With unemployment below 4%, it’s a competitive hiring market, and attrition could be a major problem if companies don’t take their culture seriously.
Is your company customer centric?
Our extensive guide explains how to build and measure a culture of customer centricity, step by step.
How customer interactions add meaning to work for every employee
In our recent report, how a customer centric culture ties to happier employees, we found that 73% of people who believe customer satisfaction is a high priority at their company find their jobs meaningful—compared to only 55% of employees who didn’t think their company emphasized CS enough.
Employees want to know that the work they’re doing is helping someone with a real problem—not just generating revenue. That’s why those in the study who believed their work had a high impact on customers were so much more likely to be fulfilled by their work.
If you can directly track the fruits of your work to the end benefits for the customer, your job takes on a higher sense of purpose.
How customer centricity helps keep salespeople engaged
There’s one demographic that’s especially likely to benefit from a culture of customer centricity—sales. Obviously, when you’re talking about salespeople customers (and potential customers!) are always top-of-mind, but building a customer-centric culture changes the mentality from “how do I win the customer?” to “how do I serve the customer?”—something that will be more fulfilling in the long run.
The more your team of cares about the customer’s needs, the easier they’ll be to address. And if salespeople know that customer centricity is an organization-wide value (and sees that for themselves), they’ll know their jobs are highly valued.
Sales organizations have some of the highest attrition rates of any department. Forbes cites that at a minimum, sales has an average turnover of 20% per year, and 34% if you consider both voluntary and involuntary reasons for leaving. It’s a scary statistic, but building a customer-centric sales team can improve this rate significantly.
According to Gallup, companies with engaged employees have 20% higher sales and 21% more profitability. The bottom line is that developing a sales team where customer-centricity is valued leads to more stability over time.
Top tips for a customer centric culture
- Measure customer centricity with easy culture of customer centricity template.
- Check in with employees about their connection to customers, and use the data to make a case for new, customer centric programs to leadership. In the word’s of our VP of product marketing and voice of the customer, Christine Rimer: “Presenting the survey results completely changed the relationship dynamic. It went from pushing leadership to endorse an initiative to them taking it upon themselves to sponsor and launch all kinds of efforts aimed to improve customer centricity.”
- Promote internal storytelling efforts, including internal reports on great customer interactions, dedicated Slack (or messaging) channels, and explicit feedback from customers posted to public company spaces.
- Bring in customer speakers.
The more you bring your customers to life for your employees, the more they’ll understand the benefits of their jobs. Whether you’re losing great salespeople, employees in general, or just want to bring more life to your culture, building a customer centric culture is a great way to start.
How your team can embrace customer interaction reports
Discover how to adopt customer interaction reports so you can help your employees connect with customers.
