The ‘Customer First’ Sucker Punch

What This Is About: Why do leaders insist on choosing between employees and customers? It baffles me. A mid-level exec shrugged her shoulders in exasperation, explaining to me that the new leadership of her organization was emphasizing the need to become totally customer focused. Essentially, the way the message from above is being translated employees is: “We have cared too much about people at the expense of customer focus. This is going to change.” The questions subsequently being posed by many team members in response are: “How can you expect employees to be more customer focused by reducing the focus on people? Don’t highly committed and engaged people attend to customers in better ways?” I think these are the right questions and too often executives default to the glib rebuttal of, “we’re all about the customer first. Customers pay the bills.” And I strongly believe that embracing this mindset is, ironically, the road to actually becoming LESS customer driven.

What to Do About It: My strong belief is that we need to be both “people first AND customer obsessed.” Note the emphasis on the order, along with the conjunction in the phrase. We cannot give customers excellent value and experience at the expense of people. Being people first is not a matter of focusing on employees at the expense of customers either. It must be an “AND.” Finding the right balance and integration between employees and customers is the true magic and a culture cornerstone of differentiation. Too often organizations design lousy processes that work for customers but suck for employees delivering the process, or vice versa. Remember to design a customer process through the hearts and hands of people delivering it FIRST, and the customer experience will likely be exceptional. Design processes to make employees heroes first and customers the applauding recipients as an outcome. It’s that simple and that hard. While politically and practically popular, do not be sucker punched to loudly announce the exclusivity of being “customer first.” It is most likely not sustainable. This is somewhat counter intuitive and right.

Think Big, Start Small, Act Now.

- Lorne

One Millennial View: What a perfect season to bring this up. The myth that the “customer is always right” doesn’t seem to make much sense when they’re tearing apart the store at 2 a.m. on Black Friday, does it? While obviously it’s extremely helpful and better for business to keep the customers’ well-being in mind, if leaders don’t have their employee’s backs when customers get ugly, then how could you possibly expect to keep them happy, productive or to even care? Think about it like the military. Your customers are the civilians in a country that you need to please and protect, but your employees are your brothers in arms. You need to stand up for both.

- Garrett

Edited and published by Garrett Rubis.

The ‘Customer First’ Sucker Punch

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