Building A User-Centric Culture To Boost Retention

Friday honesty: Customer-centricity is a lot harder to maintain than it seems. Even for those of us in Customer Success. The tendency is always to drift toward making our processes and focus company-centric rather than customer-centric. Don't believe me? Just look at one example of this: Customer Journeys. Many teams say that they have a defined Customer Journey. But rather than actually being oriented around the customer, for many the journey map is a list of activities from the company's perspective that are built around milestones the company cares about (contract signature, go-live, renewal, etc). I know about this, because I've been guilty of it in the past myself. I confuse my activity list with a customer journey and wonder why customers aren't as successful as they'd like. While important, that isn't a customer journey. It's an activity list. It's a rut none of us mean to fall into, but it's the natural drift because we live and breathe our own organization. So what do you do about it? How can you adopt a more customer-centric mindset in this area? TRY THIS APPROACH INSTEAD: 1. List out the stages your customers' business goes through at each phase of their experience with your product. Use these to categorize journey stage, rather than your contract lifecycle. 2. For each stage, list out what their experiences, expectations, and activities should be to get the results they want. Don't focus on listing what YOU do, but rather focus on listing what a customer does at each phase of their business with your product. List out the challenges they'd face, the business benefits they'd experience, the change management they'd have to go through, the usage they'd expect. Think bigger than your product here. 3. Then map what support a customer would need to actually accomplish these desired outcomes at each stage of the journey. Think education, change management enablement, training, etc. 4. Based on all of the above, you're finally ready to start identifying what your teams do to support the customer. ____________________________________________ Following a process like this helps build customer-centricity in 3 ways: 1. It causes customers to be the center of how you decide which activities are most important to focus on. 2. It empowers your team to become prescriptive about what customers should be doing for THEIR success. 3. It exposes what you don't know about your customers' business. And if you don't know something, just ask them. Don't make assumptions when you can instead talk to your customers directly. Avoid the company-centric drift, fight to maintain true customer-centricity however you can. This isn't just a nice to have in 2024. It's a business imperative that's important for any business to survive in this climate. But I want to hear from you! How do you guard your org from drifting to company-centricity? #SaaS #CustomerSuccess #Leadership #CustomerCentric

💪 Transforming Organizational Culture: A Blueprint for Customer-Centric Success 💪 In my last article, I highlighted how traditional banks and credit unions can transform to become more customer-centric. But transformation doesn’t stick without cultural change—and culture starts at the top. From 21 years with ING Direct and Tangerine, and more recently working with tech and fintech companies, one thing is clear: a customer-first culture doesn’t happen by accident. It takes deliberate effort and leadership commitment. Here are 9 practical ways to embed customer-centricity into your culture: 1. Lead by Example 🙋♀️ Executives must model customer-first behavior. That means engaging directly with customers and frontline teams—not just reading reports. 2. Articulate a Clear Vision 🤩 Define what customer-centricity means and how every role contributes. From the mailroom to the risk team—everyone impacts the customer experience. 3. Empower Employees 🤝 Give people the tools and authority to solve customer problems. Ownership fuels accountability. 4. Invest in Training ⏳ Ongoing learning in empathy, problem-solving, and listening is critical. Evolving customer needs demand evolving employee skills. 5. Align Metrics and Incentives 🔢 Tie performance reviews and rewards to NPS, CSAT, and customer feedback. What gets measured gets improved. 6. Break Down Silos 🧨 Customer experience is cross-functional. Product, marketing, fraud, risk, and service must collaborate to deliver a seamless and secure experience. 7. Listen—Relentlessly 🩺 Create feedback loops with both customers and employees. Executive roundtables with frontline staff can surface real-time insights. 8. Celebrate Wins 🏅 Regularly recognize employees who go above and beyond for the customer. Storytelling builds momentum. 9. Embed and Repeat 🔁 Cultural transformation isn’t one-and-done. It needs to be reinforced through leadership accountability, routines, and agenda time. Conclusion 🧱 Customer-centric culture is built brick by brick. But when done right, it delivers lasting loyalty, growth, and employee pride. If you're a bank, credit union, neobank or fintech ready to embed customer-centricity into your DNA, I’d love to help. Whether as a C-level leader or advisor, I bring experience that turns strategy into results.

Everyone talks about building a customer-centric culture, but how do you actually make it happen? After years of seeing what works (and what doesn’t), I’ve noticed even the best leaders hit the same roadblocks on their way to true customer centricity. The good news? Small shifts make a big difference. Here are three key barriers and ways to overcome them: 1. Being too focused on internal metrics. It’s natural to prioritize business goals, but if the customer isn’t top of mind, your decisions can drift off course. Consider every change from the customer’s perspective to keep your team aligned. 2. Not getting the whole team on board. Customer experience isn’t just a task for your support team—it’s a company-wide commitment. One thing I’ve learned is that when the whole team buys into that mindset, it changes how you operate. It’s up to leaders to make sure everyone understands how their role impacts the customer journey. 3. Collecting feedback but not acting on it. Feedback is a powerful tool, but only if it leads to action. I always encourage my team to see it as an opportunity to grow and improve—after all, it’s coming straight from the people we’re here to serve. Building a customer-centric culture takes focus, but the payoff is real. By keeping your team aligned and tackling these barriers, you’ll foster stronger relationships and lasting loyalty. 💪