Lead with culture to win with customers

You’ve aligned your structure and streamlined your processes, but lasting customer success depends on something less visible yet deeply impactful: your leadership and culture. It’s often the softer elements, like a shared vision, leadership behavior and daily team dynamics, that determine whether customer-centricity truly becomes reality. Think of it like the soft, fertile soil from which results can grow and thrive. Hard outcomes like glowing reviews, increased loyalty or long-term turnover growth also stem from these soft foundations. Without strong leadership and a culture that prioritizes the customer, even the best-designed structures and workflows fall short.

Customer focus starts at the top

Many organizations claim to be customer-centric. But unless that mindset is consistently demonstrated and encouraged from the top down, it rarely becomes embedded in everyday behavior. Leadership has a crucial role to play. Truly customer-centric organizations walk the talk. They are led by people who embody the values they expect from their teams and create a culture where customer focus is a shared belief. In practice, this means leaders take the time to understand customer needs, connect strategy to customer value and empower their teams to act accordingly. For example, leaders who listen to customer feedback and connect with frontline teams show that customer focus isn’t just a slogan but how priorities are set.

Turn values into daily action

Building a customer-centric culture involves more than just words; it requires actions. Three key steps include:

1.  Start with a clear purpose: Put the customer at the heart of your goals. Engage employees in shaping initiatives so they feel a sense of ownership and gain clarity to understand what is expected from them. 

For example, a fashion retailer with a strong sustainability purpose encouraged store staff to suggest local projects aligned with that organization's goals, like organizing clothing recycling days or spotlighting sustainable collections in-store. Teams could implement these low-budget ideas independently, reinforcing the company’s values while engaging employees in purposeful action.

2.  Involve leadership: Culture follows leadership. Leaders must actively promote customer-focused values and behaviors. Model the right mindset, challenge employees on their behavior and give priority to customer-focused initiatives. In this way, leaders can significantly influence employee attitudes and actions. 

For example, one financial services provider aiming to shift away from a traditional, bureaucratic image embraced a “corporate startup” mindset. Executives stopped wearing formal suits and spent more time with teams on the floor. This led to visibly reinforcing a culture of approachability, agility and innovation.

3. Shift the mindset: Empower your employees. Train teams to think like customer-focused partners. This means not only learning to think from the customer’s perspective, through tools like customer journeys, but also developing a mindset of flexibility, ownership and problem-solving. A key enabler in this transformation is the role of team managers. 

For example, a wholesaler aimed to establish a new way of working within their freshly restructured teams. Their team managers were coached to facilitate structured team meetings with a clear focus on customer value, including getting insight into KPI performance, setting behavioral expectations and encouraging active participation from all team members. By enabling managers to lead this behavioral shift, customer focus becomes embedded in everyday routines.  

 

A customer-centric culture drives results

Employees are more motivated, collaboration improves and decisions are made with the customer in mind. Over time, this leads to stronger relationships, higher customer satisfaction and sustainable business growth.

Customer-centricity may begin with changes to structure and process, but to truly make it work and last, it must be rooted in people. At IG&H, we help organizations shift their operating model supported by focusing on leadership and culture. Make sure you don't miss part 1 and part 2 of this blog series. Ready to build a culture that powers sustainable growth and meaningful customer relationships?

Let’s build a culture that delivers, together. Reach out to

Vera van Deursen 

E: vera.vandeursen@igh.com

T: +31 613294732

Authors: Eva Sleeking, Veerle Willemsen & Vera van Deursen