How can you build a customer-obsessed team?

Customer-obsession in a team is critical for delivering exceptional experiences and business performance. Some actionable are: 1. Lead by Example: Demonstrate and celebrate customer-centric behavior in team interactions. 2. Hire the Right People: Recruit individuals with customer-centric mindset. Empathy, courage and genuine interest are key competencies. 3. Training and Development: Ensure that team has knowledge and tools to meet customer needs effectively. 4. Autonomy to the Team: Give your team the empowerment to make decisions that benefit customers. 5. Set Clear Expectations: 6. Feedback and Recognition: 7. Customer Feedback: Building an obsessed team requires commitment and consistent effort.

The tools required to exceed customer expectations must also include the necessary technology to meet the customer’s needs and ambitions today and in the future. What will the future look like in your sector? Working at this level and pace requires a cultural shift or alignment in which intentionality drives our actions, and we are committed to doing things differently to anticipate customer trends and be proactive in our engagement with customers.

To start. Hire your customer and people who relate to your customer, hire train and develop customer obsessed teams and great storytellers. Focus on people who want to be of service and give them the access and ability to do so. Kind and professional salespeople and teams are the soul of your brand and business. Celebrate and reward great service and selling. Celebrate your customers and engage them and give your team creative ways to connect and communicate. The best brands have people who can tailor each experience and create lasting relationships. Treat returns as a sale and listen to what is being said about your product and brand. Then over service. Your team counts. Your customer counts. Be of Service

Listen (Early & Often). Solicit input before, during, and after you launch. You need customer feedback to start and sustain your success. Disclose (Occasionally). Share context, data, & and relevant information. Help your customers help you. Inform and simultaneously, draw insights from your customers. Respect (Always). Adhere to customer preferences on when, where, and how they choose to communicate. Never aggravate or inundate your customer.

Some of the best customer-obsessed businesses don't simply work to understand consumer needs, they work to know what the customer is going to need and want in the future. They know the competitors of their customers and know where they can help to differentiate offerings. They know their partner's markets better than they often know themselves. Developing products and solutions that the customer doesn't even know they want is game-changing. This requires a deep level of intimacy with markets and technologies and a voracious appetite to invest and innovate. Driving this mindset through talent attraction, development, reward and growth can help to cultivate a formidable culture where success is measured by customer performance and results.

I studied the French #1 motorcycle oil brand - IPONE I discovered that all the staff in all functions rode motorcycles to work, there was not a car in the parking lot. They were obsessed with constantly talking to and engaging and learning from the end user of their products - the rider. (not retailers or distributors) It was like this company were made up of riders wh were passionate about creating products for riders. They had the DNA at every level and fuction to deeply understand the rider and connect with them emotionally to create products they highly desired. Defining your customer facing roles and your ideal persona for each role ensures you recruit people who your customers love. This makes your company dominate.

One of my most impressive experiences is learning about how to solve for Customer Delight at #Intuit. I prefer Delight to Obsession as the latter seems to have bad connotations. Anyway, the concept was brilliant and forged Intuit’s dominance in small business and tax filing markets. It was a simple concept that educated their sales and customer care teams with customer perspectives that came from on-site visits and “walking in the customers shoes” experiences. The customer reality was a priority not lip service or sound marketing data. It helps teams go beyond great service to the ability to anticipate needs and proactively “wow” their customers.

Here are tips to build a customer-obsessed team: 1. Cultivate a customer-centric culture. 2. Collect and analyze customer feedback. 3. Invest in team training. 4. Empower team members. 5. Foster open communication. 6. Map the customer journey. 7. Set clear customer-centric goals. 8. Recognize and reward excellent service. 9. Encourage cross-functional collaboration. 10. Provide the necessary tools and technology. 11. Prioritize continuous improvement. 12. Exhibit customer-centric leadership. 13. Hire with a customer focus. 14. Measure and adapt strategies. 15. Maintain transparency.

For employees to be customer-obsessed, they must know that their work has a meaningful impact on others. Adam Grant once did a research whereby employees at a public university’s call center were asked to phone potential donors. It is challenging work as they suffer frequent rejections. So how do you motivate employees to stay on the phone and bring in the donations? Adam arranged for the employees to interact with scholarship students who were the recipients. It was just a 5-minute session and the workers were able to see how their work could impact the lives of these students. As a result, they put in more effort to obtain the donations. In short, when we are clear on the impact of our work, it will make a world of difference.

Perhaps it's buzzwords, past and present, that trouble me but being "anything obsessed," even "customer-obsessed" troubles me. Teams need to be first and foremost cohesive, they need to understand their shared dynamics, strengths and weaknesses, as well as their collective objectives and how these impact goals and results. Being team-driven allows you to leverage the expertise of most, if not everyone, on the team and allows each member to contribute to the success of the team, which should hopefully be to deliver great customer service.

Empowerment only comes when there is clarity in purpose, culture snd strategy at all levels. Spend time with your team to gain this

Regular space and sessions that can help the teams make sense of customer feedback can go a long way! Also making it easy to obtain and enable customer feedback is very important. Further, it is never easy to analyze the data meaningfully unless your teams are given space and processes that create "Cosmos from Chaos". These are the kind of programs I run for my clients and have found them to be highly impactful.

Having a team based approach, valuing multiple insights, and having a sense of urgency that the customer appreciates builds trust over time. Customer involvement is crucial.

Creating a safe environment is essential for team growth and setting up the customer at the heart of any process. If your employees feel secure and safe sharing all their initiatives, and challenges and not afraid to fail while being watched - that is a superpower that will drive their enthusiasm and courage.

Take care of those, who will take care of your clients. It is simple, isn’t it! Teams can be empowered when they work in a Psychologically Safe environment. They perform when they don’t feel a threat at work. It is imperative that their performance response is evoked rather than fear response. Google’s Aristotle project has already proved that the highest performing teams are the ones which have a highest collaborative culture. Thus creating an environment of rewarded vulnerability is essential for customer success.

The key ingredient to empowering your team starts with creating atmosphere of unwavering confidence that goals towards meeting customer's needs are achievable. Beyond the soft skills, the team needs continuous training to upskill and reskill with changing demands of customers. Its is inimical to the business when your customers demands outstrip your teams skill toolkit.

In addition to empowerment is true ownership. When your team members get to make real, impactful decisions in the moment, and are rewarded for taking risks that benefit the customer, then they get serious about adding more and more value. Successfully building customer experiences that hit it out of the park is how they begin to obsess about creating more and more of these experiences. And then let them receive the customer's feedback - it isn't just meant for the top tier. It feels good to do good - and when the recipient is a customer, it feels great to know they've contributed their best and made a positive difference.

Ensure that customer insights and feedback are not only shared but reviewed and tracked on a regular basis (together with their action plans) with leaders in the organization. This helps provide the rigor and discipline to prioritize these, act on them, celebrate progress and address challenges. Also embed these as an input into how functions operate (e.g. product development).

The organization should be employee obsessed so that the employees can be customer obsessed . I all starts with how the employees feel about their organization and how it makes them feel .it is those emotions that actually get transmitted to the customer . Let's be very clear about this chain reaction. If an organization doesn't care about its employees but hopes that they will be customer obsessed. It ain't happening !

To empower your team and foster a customer-obsessed culture, delegate authority, provide autonomy, offer training, encourage collaboration, recognize achievements, and encourage feedback for continuous improvement. Finding the right balance between autonomy and support is key, and utilizing Delegation of Authority (DOA) can help establish clear boundaries and accountability.

Remember when Kickstarter first launched? It was a novel way to engage your customer base WAY before the product design was even finalized. Take a page out of their book by involving your customers as trusted build partners to generate ideas, give feedback on designs and evangelize your product. By creating a community of loyal customers, you will have a powerful group of people that can accelerate your growth.

Other creative approaches in a more unique and meaningful ways , One option is to organize customer advisory boards or panels where a select group of customers from diverse backgrounds and experiences can provide ongoing insights and guidance to your team. This allows for deeper collaboration and fosters a sense of exclusivity among those involved. Another idea is to host customer appreciation events or exclusive VIP experiences, where you can thank your most loyal customers and provide them with a behind-the-scenes look at your operations or upcoming projects. These alternative approaches not only deepen the engagement with your customers but also reinforce their trust and loyalty, ultimately leading to a more customer-obsessed team

💯. You need to get their permission to be right. It’s not enough to know what’s right for your customer; you must be transparent in earning the right to be right.

Actively solicit feedback through surveys, focus groups, or online platforms to understand their preferences and pain points. Establish open communication channels, such as customer support & community forums, encouraging customers to share their experiences & suggestions. Consider beta testing new products or features with a select group of customers, allowing for real-world feedback before a full launch. Social media can be a valuable tool for engagement, as well. Regularly communicate updates and changes, demonstrating that their input is valued and acted upon. Ultimately, involving customers in different stages of your business fosters a sense of collaboration and ensures your offerings align with their evolving needs.

I would to highlight a success story on how Marriott International recognized the value of engaging with its loyal customers to improve the guest experience and customer service. They created the "Marriott Bonvoy Insiders" program, which is an online community and forum where members of the Marriott Bonvoy loyalty program can interact and share their insights and experiences with Marriott hotels and services. The Marriott Bonvoy shows how a brand can create a dedicated online community where customers actively participate and contribute to improving customer service and the overall guest experience. It's a win-win situation: customers feel heard and valued, and Marriott gains valuable insights and enhanced customer satisfaction.

You can also doing this by having your team members serve as your customer! When I was at Whole Foods Market, we had our corporate Team Members work in the store during orientation to build empathy for our Team Members and customers. Nothing can replace an immersive experience to develop that empathy!

Involving the customers in your projects/ activities in a non-negotiable. In Talent and Learning assignments, we ensure that business remains an active voice from start to finish, and we accomplish that by: 1. Getting a project sponsor who advocates the project 2. Identifying customers who work as team members and co-create/ review/ validate the program designs - to help us maintain relevance 3. Finding champions who share customer feedback on a continuous basis and also socialise the programs within the user/ customer groups to drive adoption and effectiveness

Involving customer is what we called as a Relationship Marketing and it helps organization to convert customer into partner!! It starts from Company - Customers - Clients - Members ( by Joining Company Club if any) - Advocates (Mouth Publicity) - Partners .... If you involve your customers in a right way, they would help you in your brand building!!

En este punto es fundamental contar con un equipo que sea capaz de generar conversaciones donde el cliente se siente participe de las ideas que le van a favorecer. Para llegar a este punto es imprescindible haber creado una relación de confianza. Y que el cliente sienta orgulloso de "usar" la marca y/o que el trato recibido le situe en soy "especial" por tomarme en cuenta. Y normalmente estos equipos ponen el foco en el seguimiento, la atención personalizada previa, para llegar a este punto. De ahí la importancia de contar con perfiles de atención al cliente centrados en los detalles y cuidado del cliente. Aquí la estrategia es a medio y largo plazo, más que a corto.

Collect and analyze customer feedback through surveys, interviews, and data analytics. Use this information to understand customer preferences, pain points, and needs. Then Create detailed customer personas that represent different segments of your target audience. This helps team members empathize with and better understand the customers they serve.

Keep in mind that growth isn't just a vertical prospect. Lateral growth is just as important and is, at times, more effective. Encourage team members to explore skills in parallel roles & career paths.

Another approach is to encourage cross-functional training and job rotation.By providing opportunities for team members to learn about different roles and functions within the organization,you can broaden their skill sets and perspectives,leading to more well-rounded and adaptable team members.Another effective strategy is to establish a mentorship or coaching program. Pairing experienced team members with newer or less experienced ones allows for knowledge sharing,skill development,and personal growth.This not only benefits the mentees but also provides an opportunity for mentors to reinforce their own knowledge and expertise. Furthermore,fostering a culture of experimentation and innovation can lead to continuous learning and improvement.

Start a book club. At your weekly meetings (one chapter a week), discuss one thing you've learned from the week's chapter and whether you were able to apply what you learned. This can lead to significant experience shares among teammates.

Creating a foundation of psychological safety is crucial to continuous learning. Make sure your team feels safe to provide ideas and experiment. Experimenting is the key to innovation. It also may lead to failure, so your team needs to know it's ok to take calculated risks.

Enable your team to learn directly from customers. Appoint them as sponsors or champions for clients as they onboard and use your product. Encourage them to articulate the “voice of the customer” as part of their balanced scorecards and internal performance measurement, reporting, and planning.

Invest in ongoing training and development for your team members. Provide resources and workshops on customer-centric skills, such as active listening, empathy, and problem-solving.

Combining pieces of different ideas or feedback to create something new can often generate an idea better than any one of them alone. When you combine ideas from others, you also gain additional buy-in from them. That sense of ownership and commitment is valuable in serving customers.

Aprender y mejorar como la fórmula del crecimiento, totalmente de acuerdo. ¿Cómo se consigue? La clave está en la cohesión del equipo y el principio que lo sustenta es compartir un #propósito común con alineamiento en sus valores. Es la base que permite compartir desafíos, dudas, miedos y éxitos que permiten solucionar y aprender unos de otros. Los entornos que garantizan los 4 principios de seguridad psicológica de: 1. Sentirse aceptados 2. Seguros para aprender, 3. Seguros para contribuir y 4. Seguros para cuestionar y proponer otras opciones, están más cerca de lograr el gran reto de mantener y mejorar cualquier situación.

In today's cut throat competition it's is imperative for any organisation to not only handhold their team rightly but also it's very critical to look after their customers in a long run. To outperform your competition, team plays very important role as well as your existing customers which could be more loyal to you when they feel safe and secure with your brand. Customer wants to trust you and in return he wants more than his expected products or services which gives him feel of pride and emotional attachment which keeps him with as a loyal customer for a longer time.

A key to providing and receiving good customer service is to treat every opportunity as a relationship NOT a transaction. There are many places people dread calling or visiting because they know the person on the other end of the phone or across the desk doesn't care. Be intentional on meaningful connections. When people know you genuinely care about them its a game changer. A person can be coached in this area but honestly it needs to one of their core values. When it is, they won't only excel at customer service, they will excel in life.

Motivating and inspiring your team can be achieved through various strategies. Firstly, set clear and challenging goals that align with your team's purpose and customer-centric vision.This provides a sense of direction and purpose, encouraging your team members to strive for excellence. Secondly, recognize and celebrate achievements, both publicly and privately,to show appreciation for their hard work and dedication.Thirdly, provide continuous feedback and support,offering guidance and resources to help your team members improve and grow.Foster a positive and inclusive team culture by valuing diversity,encouraging collaboration,and celebrating different perspectives. Lastly, lead by example by demonstrating your own passion and dedication.

Celebrate Successes and achievements related to customer satisfaction is very important, This can include acknowledging individual efforts and team milestones. Also empowering nd Trusting the team to make decisions that benefit the customer. Trust them to do what's right without constant oversight. Lastly i would say continuous training and development opportunities for the team to improve their customer service skills and stay updated on industry best practices.

Your customer's success is your team's success! Celebrate! Study what works, distill it and study how to improve the experience!

Never stop tying customer experience to MISSION and IMPACT. The moment you get tired of talking about it is the moment your team begins to get it. Be relentless in finding and sharing stories, feedback, and data that remind your team of the impact they can have when they serve their customers well.

To inspire your team to become customer-obsessed, lead by example and be a role model, allowing your team to connect with your vision. Share compelling stories of delighted customers and how these interactions not only strengthened your relationship with customers but also pushed your career to new heights.

La idea de inspirar es útil en algunas fases y con algunos perfiles. Ahora bien, cuando queremos de verdad poner al cliente en el centro. Más que inspirar a modo de seducción para que los colaboradores sigan nuestros pasos, es más efectivo contar con perfiles que participen, propongan y tomen decisiones. Si quién está atendiendo al cliente no puede participar al completo de la oportunidad de trabajar con el cliente, la empresa perderá el valioso feedback del cliente. De manera que la apuesta segura con los colaboradores es, una firme delegación, asegurar que conozcan la realidad del negocio y que se centren en el desarrollo de habilidades para que puedan gestionar y tomar decisiones con el cliente sin ralentizar los procesos.

Empower team members to make decisions that benefit the customer. Encourage them to take ownership of customer issues and find solutions.

When it comes to motivation, no two employees are motivated by the same incentives. Just as we customize experiences for customers, we have to tailor-make motivation packages for different teams. Companies tend to forget that your team members/employees are your 'internal customers'. A well motivated team will go far and beyond their usual remits to deliver superior customer experiences.

Brene Brown's wisdom holds true: "Clarity is kind." Inspiring and motivating your team towards customer obsession starts with this clarity. Begin by openly communicating your organization's vision, mission, and values, highlighting their alignment with customer needs. Please don’t assume they know what it means. Lead by example, illustrating how customer obsession enhances the team and the organization through customer stories and feedback. In pursuing these goals, we must not overlook the fundamentals of purpose and passion, for they are the essence of excellence. When your why aligns with the organization, purpose and passion begin to excel! #EmployeeMotivation #CustomerObsession #PurposeAndPassion

Building a customer-obsessed team often involves challenging and stretching team capabilities. Encourage your team to go beyond traditional customer service metrics and focus on building genuine relationships with customers. Set stretch goals for exceptional customer experiences, not just satisfactory ones. Challenging your team in this manner instills a problem-solving mindset and drives innovation. Create an environment where exceeding customer expectations is the norm, not the exception. This cultivates a team that’s not just customer-focused but truly customer-obsessed! #exceptionalservice

Encourage creativity and foster team cohesion among on-site, hybrid, or remote teams through training sessions that refine skills, challenge approaches, and nurture a heightened sense of empathy and responsiveness in customer interactions. Idea 1: Customer Interaction Simulations to emphasize customer needs and offer practical guidance for understanding the customer perspective. Idea 2: Problem-Solving Challenges that task your team with creatively addressing real customer issues in line with the company's mission. Idea 3: Storytelling Sessions where both you and your team share impactful customer stories, serving as teachable moments to showcase exceptional customer-centric actions and lessons learned. Find what works for your team!

I agree this final step is pivotal. Elevating your team to strive for excellence and innovation through high standards is how they exceed customer expectations. Offering opportunities for growth, mentorship, and learning programs ensures that they're continuously advancing. Recognizing their achievements is equally important. By challenging and stretching your team, you nurture a culture of continuous improvement, which ultimately leads to customer delight. It's a win-win strategy for the employee, team, and organization

Un espacio de seguridad para crecer y poder aportar valor es la clave para conseguir la evolución e innovación constante en los entornos dinámicos actuales. Insisto en apostar por cubrir las 4 etapas de seguridad psicólogica para que el capital de conocimiento del área, no se pierda. No podemos olvidar que la alta rotación en los equipos de atención al cliente y ventas que piensan a corto plazo hacen perder gran capital de conocimiento. Contar con líderes enfocados en estrategias a medio y largo plazo provoca el diseño de un entorno de trabajo que potencia y revierte el conocimiento de todas los colaboradores.

Foster a culture of continuous improvement. Encourage team members to regularly review processes, products, and services to find ways to enhance the customer experience.

There should a benchmark set for all the employees by the organisation with implementation of some basic rules in place and everyone need to strictly adhered to it like No false commitments like over selling or below selling with customers. No lie for sales with customers. Service to give priority on sales as good service automatically lead to more and more sales No bribe or illegal practices while bringing customers by unethical means 24*7 Customer centring approach These lead to give more sense of responsibility towards customers and make team more ethical towards work.

Find universal connectors for your team with your customers, often this will be at a basic human level - after all we are all human. It is often the most human hooks of what we care about for our customers that tug at our emotions and we see this in clever marketing that connects us meaningfully. Enhancing human connectivity across all organisations and helping us all keep our humans switched on is the key.

Building a customer-obsessed team is an ongoing process that requires commitment, consistent effort, and a willingness to evolve. By prioritizing the customer in all aspects of your business, you can create a team that is truly dedicated to delivering outstanding customer experiences.

Yet, an unbridled obsession with customer satisfaction can inadvertently steer a company towards myopic decision-making. This single-minded pursuit of short-term gains may lead to neglecting vital long-term strategies, potentially compromising sustainability and profitability.

Continuous Improvement: Customer focus is an ongoing journey. Encourage your team to continuously seek ways to enhance the customer experience and stay updated on industry trends.

I recently created a poll asking: Who is more important? a) Customer b) Employee Results are as following: 30% - Customer 70% - Employee This poll tell us how we perceive values. So, if you are about to build a customer-obsessed team you should take into account making a team out of those 30%. It would make you all much easier.

Try being an employee obsessed team if you want to be a customer obsessed team. The best way to inspire your team to think outside the box and go above and beyond for your customer base is to set the example with them. 1. Do creative desk drops with a pay it forward gift card they can use to do something special for their customer. 2. Schedule time for them to talk about their frustrations and show active listening and empathy to encourage them to do the same with upset customers. Think about all the ways you want your team to obsess over your customers and display those behaviors for them.

Passion is contagious. Whether you hire people who are already customers of your brand, or you hire people who just absolutely LOVE what you are hiring them to do... that's going to spread. When it starts to, the best thing you can do as a business leader or company is to ensure the way is clear (processes, resources, technology, employee empowerment etc), and make sure you aren't unintentionally blocking that flow. ;-)

We have to be balance the want and need scales. Sometimes customer don’t know they need something until they see it. That comes from identifying the moments of opportunity and sweating insights. Did down asking why why why until you get to the human tension

Make the systems and processes keeping customer centric and organisations should start thinking customers as their partners or stake holders.