Apple’s culture continues to reinforce Steve Job’s approach to designing using a customer lens and working backward. Source: Apple’s WWDC18
A recent article by Nadia Cameron from CMO highlighted a panel discussion in which many leaders acknowledged the quick wins for customer experience improvements are over.
It’s great to see more and more senior leaders recognizing the need to go deeper and look at organizational culture. Whilst it can be more difficult work, it is also longer lasting and more sustainable if leaders put the effort in to change the cultural emphasis towards making customer’s lives better.
So how are CMOs and other leaders looking to address culture?
One of the best examples comes from Rachael Powell, the Chief Customer and People Officer for Xero, they are taking an inside-out approach by focusing on their people and how they impact the customer’s experience.
Xero has recognized the intimate connection between how employees are treated and how they, in turn, treat customers:
“It really is about starting with our own people first who are the biggest ambassadors for our brand, winning their hearts and minds, then resonating that out to our channel, which is bookkeepers and accountants, and ultimately the end customer sitting at the end of the spectrum,” she said. “If we achieve this, we go from having 2000 ambassadors, our people, to having hundreds of thousands of ambassadors globally.”
They also appear to have a strategy for shaping their culture over time with 2 of 6 pillars sitting with Rachael: “great people and teams, and love and protect our customers”
It will be interesting to follow the Xero journey as they continue to grow!
Could you create change if you knew the strengths and weaknesses of your company compared to these companies?