Corporate Culture Will Bind Employees to Help Deliver Customer Experience in 2022
In 2022, customers and employees alike won’t be afraid to vote with their feet – a trend that has already started. With wide ranging choice, customer loyalty will come from outstanding customer experience. In turn, delivery of customer experience will only be possible if company culture binds employees to the organisation in a meaningful way.
Corporate culture has always been important – but it’s taking on an outsized significance in the coming year, precisely because that culture doesn’t just impact the organisation’s employees, but also the ability of the organisation to best serve its customers.
There are several reasons why these seemingly disparate elements are interlinked. Start on the employee side, with the fact that employee expectations for a company culture suited to them are on the rise.
2022 will see even greater numbers of employees unafraid to vote with their feet if they don’t like the culture that an organisation is offering or find it wanting in some of its key values or principles.
Meanwhile, on the customer side, there is more wide-ranging choice than ever of who to do business with. What prevents these customers from switching to another vendor? Increasingly, outstanding customer experience is what drives customer loyalty.
What becomes clear, then, is that delivery of customer experience will only be possible if company culture binds employees to the organisation in a meaningful way.
Staying aware of the following trends and keeping them top of mind will help organisations tackle this dual challenge and strengthen their corporate culture in order to drive delivery of superior customer experience in the coming year.
News Flash: Anyone who Joins for Money, will Leave for Money
There’s a fierce battle for talent right now. Potential employees on the market are asking for outrageous pay, and more often than not, they're getting it.
Before organisations pat themselves on the back for successfully filling any staffing gaps in their departments by hiring one of these individuals, however, they should realise that anyone who goes to an organisation solely because of money, will leave for money as soon as there’s a better opportunity somewhere else.
In order to hold on to talent, there needs to be something other than money that binds the individual to the organisation, and that’s where culture comes in. Company culture is more important than ever – and it’s the secret sauce that prevents a company from being viewed as an interchangeable “commodity” by its employees.
“I Like your Organisation. Now, about your Carbon Footprint…”
The new workforce wants to work for companies whose values align with their own. To that end, they’re very much invested in what a company is doing from a diversity, equity, and inclusion standpoint, an environmental standpoint, and so on.
Lest companies think young employees are the only ones asking about these sorts of things, rest assured that potential clients are starting to as well. Increasingly, they are requesting information about the demographic makeup of senior leadership or the size of a company’s carbon footprint in their RFPs, to help them decide which companies they want to do business with.
The most successful organisations will be those that take these matters seriously and thoughtfully rather than implementing a superficial “checkbox approach” – something that potential employees and potential clients can see right through.
Tech Touch only Gets you so Far – Human Touch Still Plays a Role
Companies can’t do one-size-fits-all marketing when they’re targeting new customers – they need to finely hone their personas and continually refine them to drive engagement. Does tech play a role here? Absolutely – you need a tech touch to be able to scale and maintain a single 360-degree view of the customer across all touchpoints.
It can’t be entirely about the tech touch, though – you also need the human touch. Companies need to be able to know when to bring in the appropriate expert to provide the appropriate advice for individuals in particular stages of the journey where they reach a challenging experience or fork in the road.
Recognising where people need that helping hand shows that the company is not only engaged in the success of their journey, but also that they recognise exactly how to amplify positive experiences for customers, while minimising any potential negatives.
Customers Aren’t Afraid to Vote with their Feet if They’re not Getting the Experience they Want
What happens when even the biggest, most entrenched giant within an industry is revealed to be one subpar customer experience away from losing millions of customers?
We found out not too long ago when Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp experienced an unexpected outage that took their services offline for nearly six hours. The result? A competing service, Telegram, gained 70 million customers in a single day, many of whom were defecting from WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
The message for companies of all sizes and status is that providing a seamless customer experience is more important than ever in building customer loyalty. Customers have plenty of options – and if you’re not providing a smooth, seamless experience, they’ll be more than happy to take their business elsewhere.
Security is Expected – Always
You wouldn't walk into a bank and ask them not to let any criminals steal your money; nor would you ask your mobile service provider whether or not the new phone you just purchased is secure.
The expectation now is that secuirty is inherent for any product or service that customers procure from a vendor - and that both company and customer information is protected at every stage of its lifecycle. The trick is for companies to execute this strong security while not interfering with end user productivity and the ability to get work done seamlessly. Again, providing a frictionless customer experience and delighting customers matters.
As the above roundup amply demonstrates, organisations have plenty to stay abreast of in the coming year if they wish to operate at optimum levels. But the variety of trends to keep an eye on shouldn’t obscure the fact that it really all starts with creating a powerful corporate culture that attracts the best talent to the organisation and then allows them to do their best work.
By getting their own house in order from a corporate culture perspective, organisations are then able to deliver the superior customer experience that existing and potential customers are not only looking for but increasingly considering a requisite.
Without this mindset and approach that prioritises internal corporate culture and external customer experience, employees and customers alike will simply leave the organisation behind. By tackling these issues head on, however, organisations can neutralise these concerns and create a strong foundation of loyal and committed customers for the year that lies ahead.