To really become “customer centric”, develop your empathy
What if you learned to fight against “company gravity”?
Being “customer centric” is the stated ambition of many companies. However, this voluntarism is often curbed, according to theHarvard Business Review, by “company gravity”. It is a natural resistance force combining human and situational presuppositions. This attraction hinders an essential process: the development of a lasting and effective empathy towards customers.
To prevent corporate interests from overshadowing your customer-centric perspective strategy, behavioral sciences are full of keys. 3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_systemic sciences offer ways to decode our individual and collective cognitive mechanisms. Here are some examples :
1 - The paradoxical injunction : demand two contradictory behaviors simultaneously. "Managements often ask employees to simultaneously take the point of view of the customer and that of the company, writing Richard Bordenave, co-founder of BVA (customer behavior research and consulting company) Can we take care at the same time of designing or delivering a quality service and measuring the satisfaction of our customers? This is certainly possible at the level of general management, but when an employee experiences a conflict of interest that he cannot resolve at his level, he naturally favors his own party.Identify these paradoxes in the organization and set up an organization to avoid this schizophrenia can be useful.
2 - Salience : only what is visible is present in the mind. “The client (the real one, not the KPI table) is often invisible in the walls,notes Richard Bordenave [...] However, it is possible to materialize your physical presence in the workplace, whether real or virtual. The tools used must above all be adapted to the profile of the target audience. Marketers will appreciate a connected place that facilitates direct exchange with customers, sales staff a space for role-playing with a setting and employees of administrative services videos of customer interviews, which will bring them to life in the hallways.”
3 - Framing : implicit references guide actions.“The jargon often locks into a system that puts the customer at a distance. What about a client named “ target marketing ” ? When insurance talks about " dossier disaster ", does it not forget the insured ? Conversely, speaking of " guest " rather than a guest is not an innocent choice in the hotel industry [...]_cc781905-5cde- 3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_Internal communication, by changing the framework of representations, has the power to modify uses."
4 - Familiarity bias : repeated exposure gives rise to the illusion of knowledge. ""We know our customers well, we are with them every day",say the sellers. However, this knowledge is often only partial, centered on what the client wants to say, not on what he does not say. To act on customer culture of the collective, it is on the desire of the collaborator to know more about the one who makes the company live that it is necessary to play.
In parallel with all these considerations, conducting a behavioral audit seems to be an essential step in achieving your "customer centric" strategy._cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d
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At Sociacom, via our approachHappiness Performance, we place human relations at the center of business strategy. Would you like advice on the "customer centricity" ? Contact us.
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