Some companies just seem genetically wired to deliver a great customer experience.
Run a DNA test on employees at companies like Zappo's, Best Buy and Disney, and you’ll probably find the presence of a certain gene in their DNA. Let's call that the "customer centric gene," or CCG for short.
What is it about these companies that causes them to find and attract employees that with the Customer Centric Gene?
They all follow a three step process:
They design each position around the customer, hire people with a natural desire to serve, and place the customer at the center of the onboarding processs.
1. Define the job around the customer.
Make the description about the customer your serving; not the products or services that you’re selling. Check out this recent Job Posting from Best Buy – one of the top electronic retailers in the country - for a Product Process Assistant Store Manager Job.
The first paragraph is all about the customer:
“At Best Buy, retail is a business that requires constant innovation, new ideas, new ways to delight our customers and new ways to work together. To meet the unique product and service needs of our customers, our stores and operating models are being transformed to shift our focus from product-centric to customer-centric - a move that poises Best Buy to truly offer the entertainment and technology solutions that meet our customers' needs, end-to- end."
Hire people that care.
Hiring right is a no brainer, right? Then why do so many companies get it wrong? Why is turnover so high among entry-level customer-facing employees? It probably has something to do with the selection process.
Zappo’s has uses a unique method to separate the applicants that want a job from the applicants that want to serve customers. After their first week of training, each new employees is presented with two options:
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Accept $2,000 cash to not work at Zappo’s.
Very few employee accept the $2,000 offer. It apparently works: Zappo’s employee turnover rate is five times lower than the industry average, and their customer satisfaction rates are through the roof. Hire people that care. Your customers and employees will pay you back, for years to come.
Onboard new employees with the customer in mind.
Onboarding processes are meant to help new employees feel like a valued part of the workforce and get them up to speed on the job requirements so they can start producing quickly. Onboarding helps companies retain the talent they worked so hard to recruit, and keep them motivated and satisfied with their decision to join that company, in the end saving costs in training, turnover and bottom line revenue.
But onboarding should go deeper than that – it should include the customer, in order to establish a customer-centric culture.
My first job in sales was with a company that marketed inventory software to auto parts distributors. Every new hire spent two weeks working for one of our customers, in order to understand the customer’s business, and how our software helped them solve problems. That process gave me, and my colleagues a deep sense of empathy for the customer. And nearly all of us stayed on with the company for a decade or more – and our customers stayed longer!
Becoming a customer centric company requires employees who continually focus on the customer. The best way to get there is by designing every position around the customer, using creative methods for hiring the right employees, and including the customer in the onboarding process.
There's plenty of customer-centric DNA out there; customer-centric companies have just figured out how to attract it into their culture.Thanks to Electronic Retailer Magazine for this photo that proves the Customer-centric gene makes CEO's smile.