Many companies struggle to understand what it means to be a customer-centric organization. While a somewhat amorphous concept, the most common definition is “putting the customer at the center of everything you do.” This idea often translates into new policies, procedures and processes, all aimed at creating a more customer-centric operation. However, many of these efforts will fail.

In fact, according to McKinsey, about 70% all customer-centric change initiatives fail, not because of unclear directives, but because of a lack of bottom-up support. Leaders consistently overlook the power of culture and its gravitational pull to combat change.

A customer-centric culture can't just happen through consensus or mandate, especially if it only starts to increase top-line sales and earnings per share—those are simply the results of an inherent behavioral change. BEHAVIOR it can't change without all employees, management, executives and board members buying into why a customer-centric culture is good business.

A successful customer-centric behavior change strategy begins with understanding your change context—the pattern of influencing factors that shape how change is perceived and adopted within the company. Although contexts of change vary greatly between organizations, leaders can benefit from recognizing their unique context from which more tailored strategies can be constructed.

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For example, Company A may identify its organizational change context as strong in tactical execution but weak in strategic thinking, with one specific team—information technology—being historically more resistant to change. In addition, it can determine that the sales team is likely to be an early adopter and strongly influence other departments.

Once the changing context is defined, LEADER must identify its positive and negative aspects, where obstacles and advantages may occur for the adoption of customer-centered changes. This includes identifying behaviors, catalysts and inhibitors of customer-centric change.

BEHAVIOR they are actions and behaviors that will support or derail your customer-centric bottom line. Catalysts positively influence these behaviors, ranging from incentives to processes to make it easier for employees to perform customer-centric activities more effectively. Inhibitors include those elements that create resistance to change, whether social, operational or cultural.

Behaviors aligned with customer-focused objectives might include customer service team members staying on the phone to ensure a customer problem is resolved rather than trying to meet call time metrics or an individual employee dispatching handwritten thank you cards for their designated clients. Catalysts can include decision-making autonomy of the client for individual departments or flexibility in spending for customer satisfaction. Inhibitors can range from a rigid organizational structure, narrow compensation philosophy or caustic leadership on key teams.

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Once these cultural influences are fully mapped, leaders can create tailored interventions to change mindsets, eliminate inhibitors, reinforce harmonized behaviors and use change agents to introduce and model new. These interventions should be articulated as part of a change philosophy that fits the context of organizational change. Depending on the context, interventions may include common elements such as re-architecting the organizational structure or implementing new systems and tools to improve customer interactions.

In this situation, Company A can create a variety of behavioral and mindset interventions, including reinforcing beneficial behaviors by publicly highlighting employees who demonstrate the desired behaviors, recognizing teams across the organization that create new ideas in line with the vision customer-centric and reshape the company's vision. social network to connect distinct individuals and groups around mutually beneficial goals or ideas.

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Once leaders have broadened their view of potential change, they can better conceptualize and use more diverse interventions. This can be supported through cross-industry research to identify relevant precedents and creative interventions rather than relying solely on personal experience.

Until new behaviors and mindsets are ingrained in the social norms of the organization, they are subject to degradation. Interventions increase the interest and ability of employees to accept and implement customer-centered changes.