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To build a customer-centric organization the organization should build all its services, processes, technologies, people and structure toward “customer satisfaction”. The communication part of the organization becomes from bottom to up and from up to bottom. The organization could even go further in policy with open doors and the ability to serve and listen to the customer from all levels. The hierarchal communication is transformed to a 360 network that serves the customer satisfaction process. The technology could empower key leaders in the organization such as the CEO to respond to customer demand!
I have the experience of having an owner of a well-known restaurant in Dubai serving our table!. It is a nice experience that increases satisfaction and shows how all teams work together to serve the guests of the restaurant. Such restaurants will have a high growth if combined with excellent customer service, consistency, and quality foods.
Customer satisfaction is a key aspect of all organizations processes. To know if the organization focus on customer satisfaction you need to search for departments such as R&D, & Marketing Research as active departments. These departments are empowered to drive the organization growth.
The organization that focuses on customer satisfaction has marketing orientation. For examples, top managers and decision makers come from marketing background not from production or technical background. The customer-centric organizations have titles such as CMO, VP of sales, business strategy and customer engagement.
The customer-centric organization does not have the old line organization structure that includes functional departments that work as silos which report to the CEO or the owner. Instead, the customer-centric organization has cross-functional teams that serve the customer satisfaction.
Instead of empowering the Departmental heads such as finance, HR, logistics and others. The Horizontal and customer-centric organizations have process owners and projects leaders as the ultima power up on all activities related to the customer service. Functional departments work in cross-functional teams to support project managers and process owners.
The organizational desing of companies such as McDonald focus on excellent customer service. I'm not fan for McDonald however, MCdonald is a good example of a customer-centric organization. A more clear example for a customer-centric organization is the Marriot 5 star Hotels chain in Middle east.
I'm a fan for Marriot & Crown plaza for middle East. The top management dedicates large effort to provide excellence and customer satisfaction. My latest experience with Marriot and Crown Plaza is that they focus too much on surveys to measure the feedback from customers. They focus also on providing customized service with special relaxing natural oil sprayer to your bed, nice flowers, and fruit basket! You are also welcomed by Name through the TV screens. The room service is very fast to respond to you especially in the Crown Plaza in Riyadh compared with other hotels in Saudi Arabia.
This organization structure for such hotels is called “ Matrix “ or “Horizontal” organization. The customer-centric organization has one window to serve all services for the customer. To the contrary, to the governmental organization structures in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, these governmental bodies have different windows to serve the customers without efficient integration. They also work in silos with no focus on process optimization and Integrations. They focus on serving the functional heads satisfaction more than the customer satisfaction, this defines bureaucracy.
The Customer-centric organizations have a balanced scorecard that focuses on measuring the KPIs related to customer satisfaction and focus on process excellence. Top management prioritizes the objectives to drive profit and growth from customer satisfaction, quality management, excellence, training and process optimization.
writer:
Ammar Alshami MSC CSE CME PMP
