"We want to gain 5% more of the market share over the next 2 years.”
“We want to reduce our operating costs by 10%.”
“We want to be customers’ first choice when they think of XYZ.”
These kinds of ‘winning aspirations’ feel dime-a-dozen. Which business wouldn’t want those outcomes? There’s no unique culture, purpose, or brand play in these standalone statements.
This isn’t to suggest adding a few filler words like you’re trying to avoid your eleventh-grade English teacher of accusing you of plagiarism. We still do want to acquire more customers, reduce our costs, and be the go-to supplier for our target customers’ needs.
So… where do we start? Like differentiating on our purpose, getting customers to sing our praises, and knowing what improvements to prioritise when.
Drop the boring business goals from your all-hands presentations; tell tales of the value your customers are getting and the quality of their experience. Deliver on your promise and those returns will come.
For lack of a better example in this particular moment [I’m quite sleepy as often happens when I’m writing these], take my consumer experience with my mobile telco provider. I’ve had the same one for years now because there’s one flat fee per month and it gets debited from my account automatically. My service is consistent anywhere I routinely go. I get more than enough data for my rate, and it rolls over month-to-month so I never worry about running out. And, in the rare instance where I need to ask a question or top up my balance, I know that there’s an easy-to-use app available at my fingertips.
There’s nothing more I need from this service provider as they’ve met each of my core expectations. With no concerns on my end, outside of how my particular phone behaves, there’s no reason for me to go shopping around with their competitors. I feel I can rely on them, so they can rely on me sticking around.
Now, I don’t know what their business objectives are or what decisions they’ve made behind closed doors to provide what I perceive as a great service. What I do see though, are more and more organisations jumping on the feel-good branding bandwagon of labelling themselves as being “customer-first”.
Look! Our new financial year objectives are out and we’re putting our customers first! It says so right here at the top. How, you ask? Well, we’re going to start with a database replacement, then redeploy our back-end applications in the cloud. That’ll help… something.
Yep. Sure seems aligned to customer needs. Clear as day.
But if you find yourself wondering whether you’re the only one who’s seeing conflicting signals, try this strategy sense check to test your organisation’s commitment to customer centricity:
Are the top-down objectives written around helping your customers achieve a desired outcome or the business's own performance and delivery aspirations?
If the key objectives only describe the business success story, can a clear line be drawn between how achieving those objectives will improve the customer experience, or vice versa?
I’ve long advocated for speaking the business’s language if you want to get a seat at the leadership table (particularly for research & design roles). But if all I’m hearing is develop this or deliver that, I want to know the Why.
Great! We reduced middleware costs. Now what? How are we spending what we’ve saved?
Increased revenue? Amazing! Shareholders will love that. They’ll also want more, so how is a portion of that revenue being reinvested into the experience design of our products and services to attract and retain more customers?
Is the team taking less calls? What a time saver. But wait, that doesn’t mean go home yet. Let’s use that free time to drive outreach and growth.
These customer-centricity ‘tests’ might fail, but all hope is not lost. Don’t go running to the table waving the red flag just yet. Every change starts with someone asking tough questions and putting in the mahi (work) to show what’s possible and lead the way.
We could wait for others to take the charge, but we can’t complain if we’re doing our part. Everyday ask what can you do to drive the culture one inch closer towards the customers’ needs and expectations being the core problems to solve.
Propose OKRs that address customer needs. Define opportunities that the whole organisation can collectively shoot for. Just get the ball rolling in the right direction.
Aim less at the rewards you want to reap and more at the conversations and trials needing to be taken to get there.
