How to empower customer centric thinking

Let’s start with a question:

Have you decided to implement a customer centric strategy into your business?

If you already have made a decision, why not harness the greatest potential every organisation has at its disposal – the people? The ideas on innovation, approaches, strategy and business improvement can then come from within the organisation.  What’s more, there will be a happier workforce.

The law of diffusion of innovation says you need about a fifth of the workforce (consisting of innovators and early adopters) to create a forward momentum.  These people are the most likely to want to promote change and by nature they are more likely to be influencers in the organisation. It is these people that it is valuable to invest time into, because as strategies and change plans become formalised they will help create immense enthusiasm to delivering business change and moving forward.

It is necessary to ensure that there is formal executive responsibility in the traditional “command and control” structure.  This could be the CEO as long as he/she has the time and commitment to deliver! There are no set rules except that this needs to be an individual who is recognised as high authority and influence throughout the organisation to be accepted by the organisation as a whole. A genuine empowerment culture needs to be carefully evaluated and implemented, because traditional command and control structures can often restrict positive change.It is vital to understand that short-term profit return is not always the best policy when trying to build and deliver a customer centric framework. It has been proven that revenues follow customer experience and therefore the long-term goal of empowering customer centric thinking into an organisation is highly beneficial.