The Customer Catalyst

CHAPTER 2CULTURE

Creating a cultural C-change

C-CHANGE GROWTH DRIVERS

• The successful organisations in the Customer Economy will not be wedded to the rigid, traditional organisational functions and structures. These functional boundaries will blur and be guided by a set of C-change growth drivers, aligning the business to an external customer perspective and helping it to meet agile customer needs. This is in contrast to fixed siloes, divisions and business rules of the post–Industrial Age organisations that are becoming less relevant.
• Chief executive officers (CEOs) and senior leadership need to transform their organisations' cultures with all employees being responsible for the customer and not just domination by the sales function. Cross-functional, customer-defined roles – such as CSMs (Customer Success Managers) will become more relevant. This will demystify false perceptions and erode fear of the customer by employees, which is holding back customer-led growth.
• Ultimately, every organisation should appoint a chief customer officer (CCO). Human resources (HR), under the guidance of the CCO, should lead ‘C-change’ cross-functional working groups to drive customer-led transformation. At the customer or account level, it is important to establish agile, cross-functional, customer-led teams to meet the customer-led mission, values and business objectives of the organisation. Often, these teams are led by new roles such as the CSM.
• To help instil a customer-led culture, ...