CX Leaders Are More Customer- And Mission-Centric

June 8, 2015 2 Comments

In the recent report, The State of CX Management, 2015, we examined how survey respondents from firms with $500 million or more in revenues classified their corporate culture. As you can see below, almost half selected either profit- or sales-centric.

  • Profit-centric (Generating profits come first): 28%
  • Sales-centric (Generating sales comes first): 20%
  • Customer-centric (Our customers come first): 16%
  • Product-centric (Product features and capabilities come first): 14%
  • Mission-centric (Fulfilling our mission comes first): 9%  
  • Process-centric (Process efficiency comes first): 7%
  • None of the above are even close to describing our culture: 5%

We also examined the difference in responses based on the companies’ results in Temkin Group’s CX Maturity and Competency Assessment. The chart below shows a significant difference between companies with above average CX maturity and those with below average CX maturity. Companies with higher CX maturity levels are much, much more likely to be customer- or mission-centric.

1506_CultureVsCXMaturityThe bottom line: CX maturity often requires culture change

Filed under CCXP1 Customer-Centric Culture, Corporate culture, Customer experience

About Bruce Temkin, CCXP
I'm an experience (XM) management catalyst; helping organizations improve results by engaging the hearts and minds of their employees, customers, and partners. I enjoy researching and speaking about these topics. I lead the Qualtrics XM Institute, which is the world's best job. We're igniting a global community of XM Professionals who are inspired and empowered to radically improve the human experience. To achieve this goal, my team focuses on thought leadership, training, and community building. My work is driven by a set of fundamental beliefs: 1) Everything starts and ends with human beings, so you need to understand how people think, feel, and behave; 2) XM is a discipline that needs to be woven throughout an organization's entire operating fabric; and 3) Building the XM discipline requires a combination of culture, competency, and technology.

2 Responses to CX Leaders Are More Customer- And Mission-Centric

  1. Ian Clayton says:
    June 8, 2015 at 9:51 am

    I’m not sure there’s much of a difference in intent between ‘profit centric’ and customer centric’ in the real world IF -bug if I know but… IF you believe that understanding what your customers value and building your strategy around their success can drive decisions as to where you commit the resources.

    Customer centricity – if done properly and well, should fine tune the internal workings of the provider organization and drive ensure a great return on each workforce unit expended….

    There’s no sense to me in being ‘customer centric’ if it just means pleasing the customer all the time regardless of the effort you need to invest, or functionality you need to deliver – thats plain senseless and a recipe for failure…

    Reply
    • Bruce Temkin, CCXP says:
      June 9, 2015 at 5:41 pm

      Hi Ian: Good point. A successful customer-centric organization should be profit-centric. Unfortunately, organizations tend to work with a short-term orientation. So, there is a difference in those types of cultures (as is shown in the percentage that have chosen them). I’ve worked with many difference companies in both camps. Profit-centric organizations tend to look at each decision on the basis of what it will do to help short-term financial results. Customer-centric organizations tend to bias their decisions to living up to their brand promises, even if it has a short-term impact on financial results.

      Reply

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