Our VP of Customer Success, Rebecca McDougall, shares ideas on how to bring the customer experience to the forefront of all companies activities, leading to a customer-centric company culture.
Our mission at Cognota is to enable more people to learn and grow by powering L&D across the enterprise. This means we have the opportunity to partner with amazing customers and organizations to work collectively on our LearnOps vision.
However, when the days get busy and team members are focused on individual projects, it’s important to look for opportunities to ensure that the customer is at the forefront of everything we do. Here are some ways we’re creating a company culture that is customer-centric and motivated.
Finding ways to connect and engage with our customers beyond our product has always been important to us. Our customers are all peers in the L&D space, and giving them an opportunity to meet, share and interact with each other is something we’ve been focusing on.
Earlier this year we launched our Customer Community Roundtables to give our customers a space to discuss topics that are of importance to them. Sometimes we don’t even talk about the product, the conversations are driven by what’s important and top of mind to those that attend. It’s almost a reverse webinar, our customers are the experts and we’re giving them the opportunity to share and connect based on their individual and collective experiences.
Every other week, our entire team meets to discuss highlights, areas of focus and share updates. Each time we meet, we kick off with what we call our “Learn & Grow Luminary.”
A luminary is defined as a person who inspires or influences others, and we use this theme to showcase a customer who is doing incredible things with our platform and their broader L&D organizations.
Taking a moment to reflect on the work of our customers and how our platform is empowering them to do that work, is a great way to continuously align on our mission and why we’re so focused on what we do each and every day.
We are feedback hungry! Whether in customer calls, directly in the product or through support tickets, we’re prioritizing the work that we do based on what we hear from customers. We collect, consolidate and analyze this feedback and use this to drive our roadmap and focus areas.
However, the most important part here is that this needs to be a loop. Sending a thank you to a customer who requested a feature once it’s released is a great way to show that we’re listening and building the platform with their partnership.
It’s easy when having internal conversations to use phrases like “my customer” or “my prospect,” however when that language is used, it silos the impact that non-customer facing teams have on the overall customer experience.
Ensuring we’re deliberate in using “our” when sharing customer feedback and stories helps put the responsibility on the entire team to make sure that we’re upholding a great customer experience.
Company Values can be an important way to reinforce and align the team on the way that we work. Two of our values are integral in creating a customer-centric culture.
First, we keep it win-win, which ensures that every interaction is a true partnership. When having difficult conversations with our customers, we’re transparent and break down the walls. Their interests are our interests and we really want to ensure that we keep our partnership strong.
We also strive to drive the wow factor by creating great experiences, going the extra mile and making the magic happen. The support that we offer our customers, the ways that we show them we’re listening and hearing their feedback and how we address challenges when they come up are all framed by this value. We want to ensure we’re a vendor that our customers love working with.
What are some ways your company is creating a customer-centric culture and focusing on the client experience? Spending some time thinking about the kind of customer experience you want to create, and then ensuring that all company activities, motivations and communication is aligned to that is the easiest way to start.
