Collaboration and customer success go hand-in-hand.

One of the essential characteristics that every customer-centric organization shares is a culture of resourcefulness. It starts with the organization’s leaders. Their vision is practical, and even frugal, and it translates into the culture of everyone working there. The message is clear: “Focus on our customers rather than ourselves.” An excellent example is Barlean’s Organic […]

Most writers and speakers about customer service are focused on simply describing it, rather than paying attention to how to create the leadership characteristics that they want companies to develop. Their work seems to manifest itself mostly in generalizations and to imply that those generalizations will always work for your organization. Beware of what seem to be shortcuts.

Companies must open windows to new service design ideas in an effort to connect with customers. Leaders in high-performing organizations must aggressively question “not broken” processes that appear to be “working” in order to discover how they can be further improved. Today’s approach to customer relations has to go beyond an “absence of problems” mentality to embrace innovation in order to stay ahead of the competition.

All customer-centered businesses have confidence in their capabilities and inventiveness. Their leaders educate the organization by modeling creativity and calling on inner resources to take care of every situation.The message is clear: “Focus on our customers rather than ourselves.”

Real customer-centricity will not happen without a strong culture that is empowered to think first about customer needs. Changing the culture of your business from product-centric and rules-driven requires leadership that expects employees to “do the right thing” for customers

“Because customers tolerate it” is no longer an acceptable reason in any forward-thinking organization. It is one thing to talk about customer care; it is a completely different approach to share the journey with those customers by providing them with what they need and expect.

A culture of giving which brings what Seth Godin calls “gifts that touch us, gifts that change us” to customers will place those organizations at the center of their customers’ universe.