Why focus on building an organizational culture to delight customers?

Customer experience creates customer delight when a customer feels a sense of connection to the organization through ease of interactions. This is especially true when an organization’s interactions are driven by a level of customer awareness while leveraging technology but in a personal way. The awareness of a customer’s history and situation can be used to exceed the customers’ expectations and surprise them positively so that their loyalty can be reinforced.

To build an organizational culture focused on customer delight, you need to actively prioritize customer needs across all departments, empower employees to go above and beyond to exceed expectations, consistently gather customer feedback, and integrate that feedback into decision-making, while also hiring individuals with a genuine desire to provide excellent service and aligning company values with customer-centricity.

Over the course of my career, I’ve tried to build well-established customer service cultures across consulting, engineering and project management teams with a focus on the following goals:

• Build Brand Identity: It helps shape and reinforce your brand’s identity. Customers often remember how they are treated and associate these experiences with your brand, influencing their perception and decision to return or recommend your services to others.
• Differentiate from Competitors: A customer service culture can be a significant differentiator in industries where products and services are similar. It provides an edge over competitors by offering a unique and memorable customer experience.
  Drive Revenue Growth: Satisfied customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and try new offerings. Their loyalty can translate into consistent revenue streams and opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.
• Enhance Crisis Management: When mistakes happen, a strong customer service culture ensures your team is prepared to handle customer complaints and issues effectively. This approach can turn potentially negative experiences into opportunities for demonstrating commitment and responsiveness.
• Foster a Positive Workplace: When a company focuses on customer service, it often creates a positive work environment for its employees. Happy employees are more likely to provide better customer service, creating a cycle that benefits everyone involved. To do this, clearly define customer focus as a core company value and communicate it throughout the organization at all levels.
• Build Relationships: By consistently providing excellent customer service, businesses can build long-lasting relationships with their customers. These relationships often lead to a loyal customer base that supports the business over time. When there are the occasional bumps in quality, strong relationships can also help smooth the customer reaction due to past satisfaction.
  

• Leadership commitment:
  Top management must actively demonstrate a commitment to customer delight by prioritizing customer needs and setting the tone for the entire organization.

• Hire for customer focus:
  When recruiting, actively seek candidates who demonstrate a genuine passion for customer service and a willingness to go the extra mile. As I have built project teams in the past, I focused on developing project leaders. I wanted team members that were focused on delivering customer business priorities which means that I needed to help all team members understand the “why “ not just the technical. Sometimes it can be challenging to get technical resources to relate to the organizational impacts of the technology architecture, but it is important.
  

After hiring the right people, regular training programs are needed to equip employees with the knowledge and skills necessary to consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences. To do this correctly, we cannot just focus on technical or process skills but need training on how to truly communicate and relate to our customers.

• Gather and act on feedback:
  Each organization should establish a system for collecting customer and employee feedback through surveys, reviews, and direct interactions, and actively use this feedback to improve processes and offerings. Key performance indicators (KPIs) related to customer satisfaction should be used to regularly track progress and identify areas for improvement.
  

Make employees feel like they are part of the process and heard even though you’re upfront that you won’t be able to do everything for everyone. However, you do have to show that the organization is listening and trying to do what’s the best for employees through what’s best for the customer.

Anticipate customer needs by proactively identifying potential customer pain points and implement solutions to prevent issues before they arise. This can be supported through initiatives for continuous improvement. Customer delight is an ongoing process, so encourage a culture of continuous learning and adaptation based on customer feedback.

• Cross-functional collaboration:
  Encourage collaboration between departments to ensure a seamless customer journey across all touchpoints. Collaboration can be reinforced by sharing positive customer stories internally about cross-functional interactions to inspire employees and reinforce the importance of customer satisfaction. To keep the customer at the center of the interactions, ensure all internal and external communication reflects a customer-focused mindset.
  

What are my key takeaways?

I have built my career with a heavy focus on trying to deliver the best possible client satisfaction both personally and through my teams. Sometimes Customer Delight can be difficult to achieve but it is not impossible. Even demonstrating progress toward Customer Delight as a core value will pay off. If organizations enable their teams with a strong sense of purpose to deliver Customer Delight, clients will notice this effort and typically be more loyal. Creating an organizational culture focused on Customer Delight will take some time and a good bit of effort. However, the payoff will be stronger customer loyalty, business growth from referrals, and more meaningful/impactful roles for employees.