Overcoming cultural barriers to delivering consistent customer experiences

Culture is recognised as a significant barrier to delivering a consistent customer experience. Various companies we have worked with describe their frustrations with different departments working in silos and customer experience being a front-line problem only.

Every company has silos, whether organisational, hierarchical or channel. However, the reality is that customers interact with a brand across its silos and not vertically within a silo. Very few companies have successfully organised themselves around their customers.

Cultural issues can be tricky to solve. While there’s no silver bullet, here are five ideas that companies have successfully implemented.

Include an experience expert in your leadership team.

Typically this would be the CEO, but organisations have incorporated a Chief Experience Officer or a Chief Customer Officer in their leadership team.

Having a leader, like a Chief Experience Officer, who is obsessed and single-minded about providing compelling products, services and experiences to customers can be a game-changer. They are responsible for breaking down silos, uniting the leadership team and driving customer-driven agenda.

Map journeys with the customer.

Most companies have rigorously documented processes and standard operating procedures. However, these are usually internally focussed and don’t articulate a customer’s emotions, motivations or intricacies. Good companies engage their customers when designing these processes and utilise human-centred design (HCD) techniques to ensure they are customer-centric.

By identifying pain points across a customer journey, you can determine where barriers are being created or even where customer data needs to become accessible to provide the customer with a seamless experience.

Customer journey mapping requires multi-disciplined teams with representation from different departments. Departments can form a common understanding of the customer and their experience across the organisation. This can foster cross-departmental dialogue and collaboration.

Make customer data accessible.

Consider how customer data can be shared across all your touchpoints and channels. This will enable all the people who come into contact with customers to have accurate, timely and relevant information about the customers. To take this one step further, consider how much information you can make available to your customers and continuously keep them in the loop.

This approach can have several benefits for both the customer and the company. Customers would not have to repeat information to different departments and employees. The time to deal with customer support tickets can also be significantly reduced.

Give employees experience in customer support roles.

Consider rotating employees, especially new hires, and allow them to spend some time in a customer support role. By doing this, employees can experience their customers and see how they interact with your products and services.

This helps employees better understand your organisation’s culture and customer service philosophy. They can understand the customer and their habits and identify where the company is falling short.

Gamify positive employee behaviours.

Gamification, coupled with enterprise agility, can be a powerful tool for overcoming cultural barriers. Agile organisations promote collaboration, experimentation and responsiveness. This can break down cultural barriers and creates a more engaged workforce that delivers outstanding customer experiences. We’ll dive into this in future thought pieces.

In conclusion, culture can hinder the delivery of consistent customer experiences in your organisation. Consider implementing these practical ideas to create seamless experiences that delight your customers to drive business success.