Perk of the day: customer-driven need not be grand and compelling!

But you won't be the first person to leave a lecture with a hefty dose of inspiration or to have devoured a management book, only to quickly discover that the road to the Efteling experience or the Coolblue total concept is quite a tough one after all. And yes, everything is right about the Ikea story and sure, BMW breathes the customer. But can you copy the Disney concept in the civil affairs department of a small municipality? And can your customer contact center ever become Zappos proof? From inspiration to practice turns out to be quite a step. Your courage is already a bit low. And, between you and me, can you secretly hear that voice in the back of your head saying "but it doesn't work with us, because everything is different with us"?

Becoming customer-driven is allowed in small steps

Recognizable? Then I have good news! Becoming customer-driven is just like life; it's allowed in small steps. Indeed, it is the small successes that color the days. Children are a great example. They don't start in third grade with the collected works of Reve either, but first learn the alphabet. A different letter every day. And every letter they learn is accompanied by an enthusiastic story. How cool it is that they now not only know the spelling letter 't' but also the capital letter 'T'. "Because now I can almost write my own name daddy!"

So small steps that are easy to apply. My tip is therefore: start with the low-hanging fruit. Where in your organization can you make the first gains with minimal effort? For example, is there already a rule that you always call customers back within a day? Or is the customer already part of your team meetings? It is often these small adjustments that lead to immediate success. Brought with a little passion, it's fun to do and it shows that small adjustments lead to nice little successes.

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Five stages of maturity

In the meantime, are you still working on your master plan? That's fine, of course. First consider carefully what is realistic and appropriate for your organization. Consider, for example, that being 100% customer-driven is not possible for most organizations, nor is it at all necessary to be successful. Blauw uses 5 stages of customer maturity in which you can find yourself. If you set aside two years to go from phase 2 to 3 or from 3 to 4, then you already have a great goal.

Then break your plan down into as many small steps as possible. It's not rocket science but it works. For example, start with an enthusiastic team of champions who can act as role models for the rest of the organization.

In short, small steps work too. Want to start today? Then from now on write 'customer' not with a capital 'k' but with a capital 'K'. Let's see what that accomplishes. Good luck!

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