When was the last time you communicated from your heart?

Coming from a rationale approach with a Mathematics graduate degree, during my 2 decades of corporate life I leant a lesson the hard way- "Emotions over numbers". We all are so much invested in metrics and measurement, that we need to take a step back and think by looking at the bigger picture, does a 10 point hike/ drop in scores really make that much impact, or is it more important how you treat people around you.

How did you make them feel last time?

How do they feel about interacting with you, next time?

What perception do they carry about you?

What do they speak when you aren't in the room?

Welcome to the era of communicating from your heart.

Thats the basic job profile of a Chief Customer Officer (CCO). He / she isn't only responsible for one team/ department but to drive a customer centric culture across the organisation. To keep customer truly at the centre, a CCO needs freedom & authority for decision making and usually reports to the CEO. The benefit of having a CCO is to avoid duplication of work across departments and avoid employees working in silos. They also assist to drive some of the best SOPs & globally followed best practices.

Having all data related to customer experience, behaviour, attitude and operational at one centralised place is the biggest challenge for the new age CCO. Only once you can get this 360-degree view that its possible to understand the customer lifetime value and eventually the products/ services to cross-sell. This also assist the organisation which department internally is responsible for a break in customer journey and who needs to fix what.

So it's very evident that a CCO is a critical role for the success of an organisation and all the more useful if he / she can communicate from the heart. As per a Forbes leadership article - Heart-centered communication involves the recognition that our humanness is a part of every communication, and that any communication that is less than caring, kind, clear, and deliberate can easily result in misunderstanding, misdirection, confusion and upset. It is less of a skill and more of an intention to care about the state a person is in when communicating as well as the experience of the person receiving the communication. This always includes yourself, not just the other person. Thus, heart-centered communication begins with self-awareness.

Communication is most effective when it intrigues the mind, stirs the heart, and inspires the soul, customer centricity is no exception, in fact the basis as the great management guru mentioned, we exist for our customer.