How to Build a Company Culture That Helps Customers

Why is culture so important? Ask any given leader and the answer you’re going to receive — as likely as not — is that culture helps retain employees and create strong teams. That’s certainly true, and certainly important. But remember, culture isn’t just your set of internal values; it’s your external ones, too, the values you put on display for the world. As such, a strong culture can help your business retain customers as well as employees.

Of course, that’s assuming you have a culture that empowers your team members to help the customer, and to provide a rich and appealing customer experience. Easier said than done? Not necessarily. Let me offer a few quick, simple solutions.

Creating a Culture That Empowers the Customer

Establish the right metrics for evaluating employees. At first blush, the team member who brings in the most new customers may seem like your superstar — but of course, what really matters is keeping customers. The team member who doesn’t have any returning customers is obviously not providing a good customer experience — and that’s the kind of thing that should be integral to your employee review process.

Hire for the right reasons. Most skills can be taught, but values like respectfulness, timeliness, and active listening… those…