Customer focus as a catalyst for a better world
4 November 2021
Customer focus as a catalyst for a better world
I started Customerry because I want to contribute to a better world.
A world with more understanding.
A world with more tolerance.
A world where everyone is allowed and able to be themselves.
Where does my belief in customer focus come from?
Where does that passion for customer experience come from? It is a question I am asked almost daily. I always had a ready answer. The real answer, which you can read above, I rarely dared to voice in the past.
Until recently, I said that working strategically on customer focus filled a missing link that I experienced in every job. After all, you are only as customer-focused as the least customer-focused department within your company.
Don't get me wrong: I still stand behind that statement 100%. For me, every company that has customer focus, customer first, or one of the many variations thereof listed as a value in its playbook must have a strategic and overarching customer team.
Call it a customer experience team, call it a customer team, call it whatever you want. The fact is, if you don't have one, you aren't structurally managing customer experience, and I guarantee you that you are, in fact, not a truly customer-centric company. By the way, I continue to be amazed at how few companies have a genuine and dedicated CX team.
Incomprehensible, when you know how much bullshit goes on in boardrooms about 'the customer first'.
But anyway, back to the main question. Why I built a company solely around CX management. Apart from the above, there is actually another, very beautiful philosophy behind Customerry. I want to make the world a little better. After all, I sincerely believe that when customers and companies understand each other better, a better world emerges almost automatically.
From frustration to solution
How? Think along with me for a moment. What frustrates you in your job? Why? And why is that? And how long have you known that this is a problem? Without knowing your frustration, I dare say that you eventually arrive at 'because that would be better for the customers', or at least something along those lines.
All too often, we find ourselves frustrated in the business world by things we want to do for our client that our company, our processes, and our environment do not allow. And as a client, the reverse is true. We often find ourselves frustrated by an unmet need because the company from which we expect this does not understand, recognize, or acknowledge our need.
Suppose that each of us experiences about 3 frustrations per day. And that we expend 10 minutes of negative energy on each frustration. That is half an hour a day. Calculate that on an annual basis, and you arrive at approximately 100 frustration hours per person. Solve that (partially), and you save the world a huge amount of negative energy. Moreover, you can use the freed-up time to focus on positive, new ideas.
So, in all my optimism, I figured that by working in a more customer-oriented, or let's say people-oriented, way, we would free up more time, get happier customers, and have fewer frustrated employees. A Win-Win-Win to infinity, then, right?
Wrong.
And how I almost lost that faith...
The fact is: customer focus is by no means the highest good within most companies. So what is? Shareholder focus. And as long as what is good for the shareholder is also good for the customer, you can become a customer-oriented company. But that is precisely where the problem lies.
After all, shareholders are often investors who want to get their investment back, plus substantial profits (or lack thereof), within a certain timeframe. And the latter, in particular, requires relatively short-term planning.
Problem number 2, because CX is anything but a short-term effort. And despite all ROI calculation models, it is damn difficult to link a CX program to a concrete, relevant, and realistic return on investment within a specific timeframe. There are numerous reasons for this, the main one being that change management always takes longer than expected, or at least that is my experience ;-).
Anyway, so 2 problems with my improve the world plan.
- Companies do not work customer-oriented, but shareholder-oriented.
- CX programs do not get the chance to prove themselves and consequently fail.
One would almost lose faith in it, wouldn't one? Anyone who knows me knows that my brain doesn't work like that, and thankfully so!
From customer focus to people focus: a search for examples.
No one has ever gotten better by merely letting problems swirl around in their own head. So I shared my concerns with others more and more often and went looking for stories that would prove me wrong.
Stories where companies revolved primarily around people, where rules were not made to prevent abuse, and where trust in customers and employees was a matter of course. And such stories exist. They are even more common than you might think. Just consider Durabrik and Marbles, to name just a few.
All those companies have something in common. An undeniable belief in the goodness of humanity. But where does that belief come from? And are those business leaders exceptions? Eternal optimists and naive world improvers like myself, or was there more to it?
Customerry reading tip: Most people are good
The answer to those questions presented itself not so long ago via a reading recommendation from a fellow entrepreneur. We were talking about the polarization in our society and how difficult it sometimes is to stay positive. He told me: 'You have to read this book, now is the time.' I didn't think twice about it and ordered the book online right away. Two days later, when I unpacked the hefty volume, my spirits sank a little. It is not exactly 'light reading,' if you know what I mean. The title? 'Humankind: A Hopeful History' by Rutger Bregman.
I finished the book in 2 days. Although it is full of scientific studies, it reads surprisingly smoothly. But what struck me most was that the more I read, the more enthusiastic I became to learn even more. The evidence that people, if not manipulated by figures of power or the media, are not inclined to harm one another is so great, so undeniable, that it spontaneously turns you into a wildly enthusiastic reader.
From education to politics, from detention to healthcare, in every sector Bregman effortlessly demonstrates, using practical examples, that a better, more beautiful world is really not as unrealistic as the daily news reports on HLN would have us believe.
On the contrary, time and again it turns out that the most beautiful progress is achieved when people work together based on trust. He concludes with his 10 rules for a better world. As far as I am concerned, they fit perfectly into any workbook on customer focus. I share them below and what they mean to me. For a detailed explanation, however, you will really have to read the book.
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