What does it really mean to create a customer centric organisation? Organisations say it all the time. Many organisations have value statements that state that the customer is “at the heart of everything we do” – but what does that really mean and how do you know if you really have it?
It may seem counterintuitive to say but a truly customer centric organisation looks first at their employees in all departments before focusing on their customers. The value statements have meaning for all and they help create the key enabler to a great end to end customer experience – your corporate culture.
“If you are not serving a customer directly you are definitely supporting somebody who is”
All employees have an impact on your customers’ experience. Some have contact with them daily, others make decisions or take actions that ultimately impact on them. The attitude and behaviours of all employees can make or break the experience you deliver. Understand your internal culture and you can manage it – if you don’t manage it you will become a victim of it.
Yet there is an interesting paradox when it comes to a workplace and a customer centric culture. Many leaders realise the importance of culture, and how it impacts on everything, yet few understand it in simple and practical terms. They believe that policy, training and process will drive culture alone – it doesn’t. As Peter Drucker stated “Culture eats strategy for breakfast!” This is where the concept of UGRs© plays a big part.
UGRs stands for ‘Unwritten Ground Rules’. The best definition of UGRs is that they are people’s perceptions of ‘this is the way we do things around here’. Examples of UGRs include:
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Around here, at our meetings it isn’t worth complaining because nothing will get done
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Around here the only time anybody gets spoken to by the boss is when something is wrong
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Around here customers are a necessary evil but the customer service centre deal with them so I don’t have to worry about it
UGRs exist in all workplaces and they create the culture that governs everything employees and managers do. UGRs drive people’s behaviour – yet they are seldom talked about openly.
It’s interesting to see how our behaviours are heavily influenced by UGRs. If you speak out at meetings where there is a commonly held view that ‘around here, it’s best to say nothing at meetings’, then you will get a very interesting reaction from others. Eyebrows might rise, smirks appear on faces, and some might even elbow the person sitting next to them. You quickly find out that speaking out is NOT the thing to do at meetings in this company! If you continue to defy the prevailing UGRs then there is a strong possibility you will be alienating yourself from others – it will not take long for you to conform and not say anything. Hence your behaviour is driven by the UGR and this in turn will drive the culture.
Think about what UGRs are driving behaviours within your organisation? If asked to complete the sentence “Around here customers are………….” what do you think
people across your business would put? I guarantee they wouldn’t all put the same thing!
In an organisation we worked with we asked 600 employees to complete the lead in sentence “Around here when a customer experiences a problem…”
We had a range of answers:
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They can make a complaint
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They are seen as ungrateful
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The staff get blamed by management for the problem
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They are given as much help as possible
What behaviours do you think those responses will generate amongst the teams they came from? We have no idea from what area of the business the responses came from, but it clearly gives an indication that the business is not truly customer centric.
Are the UGRs taking place in your business all positive and support a customer centric culture? Listen to managers AFTER they put the phone down on customers, not during it. During the call they will behave in one way – but how will they behave once the receiver is put down? What happens at that moment is a UGR and will drive behaviour amongst colleagues – thus setting the ‘tone’ of customer focus across the team.
For too long, the culture of organisations has been left to chance and that is mainly because leaders find it one of those subjects that is wrapped in theory and academia. UGRs© is a practical and simple way to engage the whole organisation in something that is the lynchpin to success. Understand your UGRs and you understand your culture. Identify your UGRs, and deploy strategies to reshape them for a truly customer centric organisation.
For more information on UGRs© and how we can help – visit www.lynchpinsolutions.co.uk
Richie is founder and Director of Lynchpin and Associates Ltd, the only licensed practitioners of the UGRs© concept within the UK. As business associates
of the UGRs creator, Australian Steve Simpson, Lynchpin and Associates help organisations develop a high performing, customer centric culture that engages
all employees in the values of the business – so that they can make them a reality to achieve business success.