3 things customer centric organisations should coach their employees on

Written by Vivek Jaiswal | Co-founder, Customer Guru

How could you ever become truly customer centric if your employees are not customer centric?

In a cut throat competitive business world, organisations are learning each day that customer experience is the new brand image. And that brand image could change with the blink of an eye if companies don’t consistently focus on customer centricity.

Just like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, an organisation is only as customer centric as its employees. Only setting up the right metric and processes is not sufficient to inculcate customer centric employee behaviour, organisations need to coach their employees to become customer centric. On top of the standard customer centric coaching, I believe organisations need to also:

1. Coach them to manage internal stakeholders

Organisations fail to acknowledge that the biggest obstacle for their employees to become customer centric are the internal stakeholders. Everyone has their own targets to achieve and goals to accomplish. Employees should be coached on how to create urgency around customer issues, hustle their way to the right person who can make the right decision, and make people feel accountable towards doing good to the customer.

2. Coach them to not be afraid

I had recently ordered a motherboard from on online retailer but hadn’t opened it for almost a month. Unfortunately, after unpacking I realised that the box seal was broken. Since I was way beyond the allowed return date, I started preparing myself on what to say to convince customer service that the seal was actually broken. After 10 mins of mental practice, I called up the customer service and, surprisingly, within 5 mins I was helped with a confirmed replacement order!

Such level of empowerment of customer facing employees could do wonders to customer experience. Organisations should coach their employees to not be afraid to go out of the norm to address a customer issue.

3. Coach them to be customer facing

Several retailers, including Apple, asks their non customer facing department heads to spend a few days in the store talking to customers. This is a powerful way of making everybody think from the customers’ perspective. Spending a few days in a customer facing role should be a part of every employee’s on-boarding process.

Would love to hear what more can an organisation do to develop customer centric employee behaviour. Please share your comments below.