#5 Customer Culture: rituals in your organisation

Culture is a big time theme, in every organisation. During this workshop, you will design a culture program, based on the current norms, that consist multiple customer rituals. And one of those rituals will be implemented at the end of the workshop. A first step to make your customers everybody’s first and most important colleague.

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What is a customer culture?

There are many theories on the changeability of a culture. So if we want to change culture, we at least need to know the building blocks of it: norms and values are the two most important. Norms is mostly driven by “the way we do things around here”, so bluntly “the way of working”. Values are the underlying drivers that are shared amongst colleagues, the unspoken ideas and beliefs that become concrete in norms. Values drive norms, so it is arguable that you should start changing values. And, because they are not visible, and unconsciously present, a culture change starts with norms (as people we want to be consistent, so when we start doing things differently, our mind will argue why we do it that way, so thought will follow behaviour).

In a customer culture the way of working starts at and ends with customers. There is no place for big ego’s and personal agenda’s, it is driven by the belief that all colleagues have one central purpose: to do best for the customer. It is therefore that culture programs do not work when higher management is committed and fully engaged on this belief. In a customer culture talking about customer cases is simply the way to explain why we do things the way we do it.

A strong customer culture contains:

• Sharing customer story’s

• Listening to customers as much as possible

• A shared feeling of responsibility to do best for customers (the responsibility is also owned by one function on C-level)

• A way of working (design thinking) in which customers goals and metrics are the start and end of everyone, together (focus)

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What is the need for a customer culture?

When norms and values are customer driven, it will be a logical step to do best for customers (with the belief they will take care of the financials that need to come in). Even today there are still many companies that start planning around budgets, and backlogs, and innovation. If you really want to become a customer centered organisation you need to show the guts to do it differently. And that is what customer culture is all about. Really start with the customer needs. As described in the paragraph above, as humans we want to be consistent, so when we start acting differently our mind will explain why we did the way we did it. So the need for a customer culture program lies in the fact that someone has to start with changing the way of working, so the mind shift is facilitated to change as well.

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What is the result of this workshop?

1. A culture program for the next year.

2. One customer ritual (part of the program) that is implemented in your organisation.

3. The first draft of a customer center way of working.