Customer orientation: where do you stand?

The analysis of the quality of customer journeys, whether digital, by telephone and/or in person, is often considered an ideal barometer of the quality of an organization’s customer orientation. However, equating the quality of customer orientation with the quality of the customer journey is not enough, as this is tantamount to considering that customer relations are merely a functional process.

It is of course different and whatever the channel of interaction, it is the emotion with which the journey will be experienced that will make the difference and that testifies to the maturity of an organization’s Customer Culture.

Undertaking a diagnosis of its Customer Culture therefore means finding out how much importance the teams really attach to the Customer and what they are prepared to do for them. Or not!

A quantitative as well as qualitative analysis

A Customer Culture Diagnostic must be sufficiently representative to allow an objective assessment at the level of your organization. It is therefore important to involve as many employees as possible in the process in order to take full stock of the situation.

A qualitative dimension must be added to this quantitative analysis in order to work in depth and analyze the conditions in which the teams operate. What is at stake is not only the understanding of the reality experienced on the ground, with the identification of the levers on which the teams rely to interact with customers, but also of all the biases that degrade their commitment and, consequently, customer satisfaction.

Finally, the alignment of the Customer Culture is a last sensitive point in the analysis: the challenge is to assess whether the experience offered, even if it is considered satisfactory, is in line with the customer strategy deployed. A high level of customer satisfaction can mask a controlled but minimal experience that is far from the initial ambition.

A true depth of analysis

The approach is based on a Consideration Symmetry diagnostic which leads to an evaluation of the quality of the client experience throughout the company or business unit. Thanks to a triple audit (Experience Strategy, Employee Experience, Client Experience), the diagnosis makes it possible to assess:

• The nature of the customer strategy
• Its appropriation by the teams and their ability to produce it
• The perception that customers have of it and the satisfaction they derive from it

The approach is based in particular on web questionnaires sent to employees and customers, making it possible to satisfy the study’s representativeness requirement.

In addition to this approach, there is a more qualitative assessment of the situation based on:

• Interviews with key players in the organization (General Management, Client Department, etc.) who explain the project and the meaning of the customer strategy
• Focus groups that can bring together both teams and customers and enrich the way the customer experience is proposed and lived
• Immersions in the field, within the teams, in order to get to grips with the atmosphere and operational realities

All the lessons learned from the diagnosis are naturally put into perspective with the commercial results and, more generally, the performance indicators of the commercial policy.

Everything is then brought together to produce an exhaustive inventory of the Customer Culture and to draw up initial recommendations.