Having spent nearly twenty years studying and analyzing a unique breed of companies that have an uncanny way of attracting and retaining loyal customers, the topic of values becomes unavoidable.
Take a quick look below and see if you see a pattern:
LEGO: Inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.
Zappos.com: Deliver WOW Through Service
Whole Foods: We satisfy, delight and nourish our customers
Amazon: Customer obsession
Google: Focus on the user and all else will follow
Adidas: We are consumer-focused, and therefore, we continuously improve the quality, look, feel, and image of our products.
Ritz-Carlton: I build strong relationships and create Ritz-Carlton guests for life
How powerful is it to have a core value—one of your organization’s foundational principles that you live and breathe every day—centered on your customer?
What this means is that every person in your organization, from top-level executives to your front line workers, knows that the customers are essential.
Each team member understands that their behavior and decisions must be in alignment with the customers’ best interests: they realize that the company that employs them has an emphasis on serving its customers.
Numerous studies show that outperforming CEOs place an incredibly high degree of emphasis on obsessing about their customers. Remember, core values reflect the idealized beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of an organization. It’s one thing to establish a core value for your enterprise; it’s quite another to actualize it.
Creating a distinct, collaborative culture is a challenging task for today’s chief executives. Cultivating a culture that is also customer-forward, however, is where the magic happens.