Lessons From Our Journey to a Customer First Mindset

Lessons From Our Journey to a Customer First Mindset

The best way to help your company stay relevant is to develop a ‘customer first’ (or ‘customer centric’) mindset.

When you make the customer the center of everything, your business benefits in many ways. A positive customer experience (CX) builds trust and inspires loyalty among your customers. This strengthens your reputation in the market and helps drive profit.

From my lens as Lenovo’s Chief CX Officer, I’d like to share a few lessons from our own journey from a ‘product centric’ company to a ‘customer centric’ one. The following are five key areas that may help your company too.

1) A Commitment to Evolve into A Customer Centric Culture

A shift in mindset must start with a commitment to do so from the senior leadership of your organization. At Lenovo, for example, our CEO, and our leadership executive committee are personally driving our customer centric transformation. It’s only if the commitment to evolve into a customer centric culture is made at the highest level, will it be adopted by every single employee of your organization.

2) A Dedicated CX Team or Governance Team

It is essential to establish a dedicated CX or governance team, to steer the ship of CX. Your governance team is responsible for implementing CX procedures, policies, and practices for the organization.

An effective governance or CX team will help ensure consistent development and execution of operational standards when it comes to interacting with customers. They need to also take the initiative in highlighting appropriate customer feedback and place it at the center of all decision making.

3) Harness The Power of Big Data Analytics and Centralized Tools

Always tap into the power of technology to create tools that can capture customer feedback. Any tool you develop to surface the voice of the customer must be centralized, so that every employee in your company can access it.

The insights from tools that use big data analytics to collate and organize customer feedback will help your business:

  • Prioritize tasks
  • Make informed decisions
  • Encourage collaboration between different teams
  • Deliver measurable results

Here at Lenovo, we take advantage of such a tool. We use a custom-built customer insights dashboard known as the CX Insights Hub to make customer feedback available to every employee at Lenovo. By democratizing this data, insights are surfaced to help identify CX areas to work on and to inspire action.

Centralized tools, powered by big data analytics, helps your teams prioritize where to invest their time, and create empathy for customers. The right customer feedback tools will promote collaboration across your teams, and encourage a focus on long term, aspirational CX goals.

4) Human Resources (HR) and Incentives

A great employee experience contributes to a great CX. When your employees are truly engaged in their work, they’re productive and will deliver as fully as possible for the organization and your customers.

As HR is keenly interested in the human element of your business, this department plays a crucial role in keeping your employees happy and engaged with their work. Also, an incentive program for employees can enhance their experience and encourage them to keep the customer in mind. At Lenovo, for example, if we reach certain CX milestones, this is reflected in our bonuses.

5) Communication and Culture

Clear and effective CX key performance indicators (KPIs) must be communicated throughout your organization. Also, you must provide appropriate training for your employees to help them build a strong CX mindset.

The journey to a customer first mindset is a continual process. By developing all five of the key areas, your organization will transform into one that places the customer at the center of everything – ultimately delivering better business results.

About the Author

Dilip Bhatia is Lenovo’s Chief Customer Experience Officer and Vice President of User & Customer Experience, PC & Smart Devices. As Lenovo’s Chief Customer Officer, Dilip drives the company to achieve its goal of being the leader in the PC, smart device, data center and mobility space. Start a conversation with him here or on Twitter.

Monikaben Lala

Chief Marketing Officer | Product MVP Expert | Cyber Security Enthusiast | @ GITEX DUBAI in October

2y

Dilip, thanks for sharing!

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Jimmy Smith

Worldwide Business Manager at Lenovo; WW Visuals / ThinkVision / Legion

2y

This is not just a generic marketing newsletter. I can attest to receiving regular insightful product feedback from Dilip's team which in turn helps us consistently deliver customer-centric product offerings. It's definitely a perpetual feedback loop in which everyone wins... well, except our competition. #customerfirst #customerexperience

Pavan C. Bhatia

Dir of Product @ Emirates Transformer | Strategic Planning Expert

2y

Good Insight and very informative.

Satyaprasad K.

Leadership | IT Operations | IT Unified Command Center | Modern Workplace Services | People Management | Budget Management | Outsourced Services | Vendor/Supplier Management | Data Center Operations | Account Management

2y

Awesome Insights Dilip. Thanks for sharing

Alison Vermeulen

Helping build better customer experiences faster | digital analytics | ecommerce | dog lover | world traveler | Bonus mom

2y

Dilip Bhatia this is great! I love that you're doing this

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