A corporate culture is fascinating… it can energize employees… it can drain employees… it can motivate employees… it can discourage employees… it can empower employees… it can suffocate employees.
Positive or negative… we all experience and live and breathe a corporate culture every workday.
Company culture can sometimes be best described as an organization’s brand or personality; it’s what you believe in and stand for, and what makes your company unique. Company culture has everything to do with how employees, prospective employees, customers and the public perceive your organization.
And, company culture is powerful: it can impact sales, profits, recruiting efforts and employee morale… positively or negatively.
“A strong and consistent culture attracts people who want to work or do business with your company,” said Mark Ship, Board Director and Business Adviser at Sandler and Ship, which helps organizations transform to accelerate growth. “It can inspire employees to be more productive and engaged… creating a more positive environment with lower turnover. Culture can even act as your best recruiter, attracting qualified candidates who want to work for your company.”
But a negative culture can be just as impactful. Just think… when employee engagement is poor… employees feel uneasy or noncommittal, which results in lower performance, higher turnover and that has a HUGE impact on customer interactions.
When it comes to company culture, there is no right or wrong. A customer-focused culture puts the customer at the center of all activity and strategy... more than profits… more than shareholder expectations… more than growth. And, more and more companies are discovering the power of a corporate culture built around the customer experience.
There is an undeniable link between employee experience and customer experience. Companies that lead in customer experience have 60% more engaged employees, and study after study has shown that investing in employee experience impacts the customer experience and can generate a high ROI for the company. But, building a customer centric culture is not without challenges.
Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) members found that nearly half of respondents to survey said a motivated and equipped workforce, two essential elements of employee experience and employee engagement, were most critical for their companies to achieve an improved customer experience (cited by 53 percent of respondents), business agility (50 percent) and digital transformation (49 percent). Yet when discussing the top 10 priorities, these same companies ranked employee engagement, employee experience and employee enablement (via technology) at the bottom of their companies’ top 10 priorities.
“Employees want to have pride in their company and products and services,” said Ship. “Armed with that pride, employees better appreciate the impact of their actions on the customer and the organization. By focusing on helping the customer succeed, employees are building a winning culture.”
Simon Sinek has said before, “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.”
Creating a customer centric culture really depends on the individuals in the organization embracing the concept that every single action has the potential to influence the customer experience. Sounds great in theory, but driving change is hard and requires patience.
We talked with a few experts on the topic and agree that culture is more than just slogans… there needs to operational changes to support the initiative… our experts suggest:
Implement an ongoing training program to reinforce and develop new behaviors;
Invest in the required technology to support the culture;
Help managers to mentor and coach their employees; and
Reinforce success and actions throughout the organization.
For an employee to adopt a customer-centric mindset, each employee must understand the company’s customers. For most companies, this means getting creative and finding ways for employees to interact with customers directly, even in “back office” functions. Every employee has an impact on the customer experience in some way, even if indirectly. For this reason, it’s important that every employee can experience direct interaction with customers to better learn about their successes and challenges.
“A company’s culture is dynamic, and it evolves with every new experience… every new employee… every new challenge,” said Ship. “Employees are the core of any culture and they need to be satisfied with their work environment. Employees will have higher satisfaction with their job and have higher engagement if they feel they are a part of the company culture. Successful companies give employees a feeling that they belong to a higher calling.”
However, there is one thing that is for certain: employees enjoy their work and perform better if they feel that they are a part of the corporate culture and it’s the role of leadership to create that environment.
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