July 22, 2025 • 13 mins
What does it really mean to be customer-centric? Too many companies claim the title without living it. In this episode, we explore how to tell the difference between lip service and genuine customer focus. You’ll learn the key signs of authentic customer centricity—like feedback that drives real change, empowered employees who can fix problems, and consistency across every touchpoint.
Jeannie explains why true customer focus requires more than good intentions. It’s about mindset, strategy, and accountability—measured by outcomes, not slogans.
Ask yourself this powerful question: If you noticed something broken in your customer experience today, would you feel empowered to fix it? Your answer reveals volumes about your organization's commitment to being truly customer-centric.
Resources Mentioned:
CX Mission Statement Workbook -- https://bit.ly/cx-mission-workbook
CX Success Statement Workbook -- https://bit.ly/cx-success-workbook
Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- http://CXIMembership.com
Experience Investigators Website -- https://experienceinvestigators.com
Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie on LinkedIn! www.linkedin.com/in/jeanniewalters/)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
MC (00:00):
Experience Action.
Let's stop just talking aboutcustomer experience, employee
experience and the experience ofleaders.
Let's turn ideas into action.
Your host, Jeannie Walters, isan award-winning customer
experience expert, internationalkeynote speaker and founder of
Experience Investigators, astrategic consulting firm
(00:20):
helping companies increase salesand customer retention through
elevated customer experiences.
Ready Set Action.
Jeannie Walters (00:31):
It's the Experience Action Podcast, and
we have another fantasticquestion from one of you, our
listeners.
Listener Question (00:38):
Hey, Jeannie.
I've worked at companies thatsay they're customer-centric,
but it doesn't always feel thatway behind the scenes.
What are some signs that acompany is truly living that
value versus just talking aboutit?
Thanks so much.
Jeannie Walters (00:54):
Oh, I bet a lot of you can relate to this one.
We hear it all the time.
We talk to leaders and theytell us we don't really have a
customer experience team orleader or process because we are
customer centric.
Well, saying it is not enoughand yet too many organizations
(01:17):
really believe it is.
We've talked to so manyorganizations who talk to us
about how incredible theirpeople are and how everybody
puts the customer first.
But if you actually reversethat and talk to customers,
they'll often say, yeah, thepeople are great, but it's very
inconsistent.
One person calls me back rightaway, one person I have to track
(01:38):
down.
Sometimes I get differentinformation based on what
department is emailing me.
It's hard to find theinformation I want and they've
never really asked me what Iwant.
So it's very easy to becomecomplacent.
It's very easy to think thatbecause we care about our
customers, because we talk aboutcaring about our customers,
(02:00):
that that is enough.
But I'm here to tell you itisn't.
We have to stop just talkingabout customer experience.
That can't be enough.
Now, this has to be both aninternal and an external
exercise.
A truly customer-centricorganization actually applies
(02:20):
the same values, both within theorganization, how we treat one
another, how we workcross-functionally, how we show
up and make sure we areexceeding expectations within
the organization as well as toour customers.
Now that can be a little tricky, but essentially, customer
impact is built arounddecision-making.
(02:42):
We have to know what decisionsare we making that will impact
the customer experience.
Sometimes that means that whatwe do inside the organization
the customer might never see itit still has an impact on what
they experience as a customer.
So these are the signs I wantyou to look for.
(03:02):
This was such a great question.
What should we look for?
So, if you are living in anorganization right now, if you
are working within anorganization that is telling you
, oh, we are customer centric,then look for these things.
Number one the customer impactis considered as part of that
decision-making process.
We can't just have a process ina vacuum.
(03:23):
We can't silo everything.
What we decide about our supplychain management and our HR
policies and how we invoice,that has a direct impact on the
customer experience, even if itdoesn't feel that way.
Because if we change our HRpolicies around time off and we
have a bunch of grumpy employees, or maybe the opposite, where
(03:47):
we don't have employees when weneed them where we need them for
the customer.
We have to think through howwill this impact the customer
experience, because otherwiseit's very easy to make very
well-intentioned decisions thatactually don't deliver on the
idea of customer centricity.
The other thing I want you tolook for is customer feedback
that actually drives meaningfulchange.
(04:09):
Sometimes we talk to differentorganizations and the leaders
tell us oh, it's great, we'redoing all these surveys, we've
got our net promoter score, wereally have it all figured out.
But if we're not using thatinformation almost in real time
to make meaningful change forthe customers, then we are
wasting time and resources andmoney and everything else.
(04:31):
That is the hard truth.
There are so many organizationswho invest so much in customer
feedback.
They invest in the software andthe surveys.
They write these beautifulthings, they get them out, they
rewrite them, they get out more,but there is no process or even
person who is gathering thatinformation and looking for what
(04:52):
are the trends, what are ourcustomers trying to tell us,
what do they want and can wemake that happen?
If it is not driving meaningfulchange, then feedback is not
really customer-centric.
I know that's hard to hearbecause many of you are probably
doing just that.
Where you are investing inthose surveys, you are investing
(05:15):
in these robust platforms, butif you are not using the
insights and information, thenthat is not an investment, that
is just an expense.
So customer-centricorganizations use feedback on a
regular, consistent basis todrive meaningful change on
behalf of their customers.
The other thing I want you towatch for is employee
(05:37):
empowerment.
Are employees actuallyempowered to not only report
when things are not going rightfor the customer, but also to do
something about it in themoment?
Frontline employees we cannothave them just follow scripts.
We cannot have situations wherethey are not empowered to raise
(05:57):
their hand and say I see abetter way to do this.
If we don't have those thingsin place and if we don't have
that trust with them thetraining, the empowerment, the
mission around what we're doingand we can recognize those who
are doing the right things thenwe are just kind of asking
(06:17):
everybody to be a robot.
That is not customer-centric.
We need to empower people atevery level not just frontline
at every level to look forbetter ways to work together, to
be more efficient operationally, to serve the customer as well
as look at the customerexperience and think is there a
better way to do this?
(06:37):
What can we do and feelempowered to actually do that?
And you heard me mentionconsistency before, because this
is such a big part of anywinning customer experience.
Consistency builds trust.
So if we are deliveringinconsistent experiences, that
is eroding trust with ourcustomers.
We want consistency acrosschannels for our customers,
(07:01):
across teams, across the waythat they receive information.
All of that.
We cannot leave the experienceto be left to chance.
This is where proactive,meaningful, intentional design
comes in.
We need to understand thatmarketing billing operations
support every single group inour organization.
(07:23):
They understand the tone thatwe want to have.
They understand how we want toshow up for our customers.
They need to understand theclarity that we want to bring
and all of that is aligned.
If you see that sometimes as acustomer, you might get a bill,
for instance, and it might havecodes on it or acronyms and you
(07:46):
don't know what those are, andthen you get something else and
it might have different acronymson it, because that's from
marketing instead of billing.
That inconsistency erodes trustwith the organization and brand
.
So make sure that if you aretruly being customer-centric,
you are breaking down the siloseverywhere you can, especially
(08:06):
around communication with thecustomer, but silos everywhere
really chip away at a consistent, seamless customer journey.
And then we want to make surethat this is not just something
we're talking about.
This is something that ismeasured and managed.
We could walk around all dayfor years and never say the
(08:28):
words customer experience andguess what?
Our customers are still havingan experience.
We have to stop saying thatwe're doing customer experience
or that this is something thatis just happening because we're
thinking about it.
Your customers have anexperience, whether you think
about it or not, whether you'reintentional or not.
(08:49):
The trick is to be intentional,measure what matters, make sure
you understand what successlooks like so you can measure
against it, and then you need tomanage that.
People need to be heldaccountable.
We have to make sure that wehave checks in place to make
sure we are actually deliveringthe experience that we think you
(09:10):
know.
In the last several monthswe've been talking a lot about
AI and one of the things thatI've seen is that people kind of
release AI into the customerexperience and they hope for the
best.
We have to make sure that weare constantly checking in with
these new ways of working, tomake sure we are showing up on
behalf of our customers in theright way.
(09:31):
And then, of course, we want tolook at the right leading and
lagging indicators.
Things like customer effortscore can be really helpful
Transactional satisfaction rates, resolution times, customer
health scores if you're incustomer success, there are all
sorts of ways, but you have tomake sure you've defined what
success looks like so you knowwhat to measure.
(09:52):
This is what has led us todevelop our CXI Navigator
Framework, and all of that isbased on this idea that you need
the right mindset.
So, yes, we need to talk aboutit, but then you need to apply
strategy.
You need to have a real planwith real metrics, real
measurements, so you know how toadjust, how to course correct
(10:13):
and how to get to success.
That matters, and in order todeliver on that plan, you need
discipline.
You need to make sure thateverybody understands what role
they play and that there arereal accountabilities around
that role.
That's what leads to action,which is why we're in the
(10:33):
Experience Action podcast.
So think about how can youdefine that mindset.
Within our framework, we talk alot about a customer experience
mission statement that getseveryone aligned.
Then you want strategy.
We use something called asuccess strategy blueprint.
This is where we really map outwhat are the top priorities
(10:55):
around customer experience.
Otherwise, what happens iseverything is ad hoc, everything
is kind of onesie-twosie andit's not aligned and you miss
opportunities for thatconsistency and then discipline
who's doing what when?
Most of us don't have full,robust teams only dedicated to
customer experience, we rely onour influence to really get
(11:17):
things done with otherdepartments.
It helps a lot if you have realdefinitions around what you're
asking for and how to get there.
And then we want to take action.
At Experience Investigators, welike to say we have a bias
towards action, meaning stoptalking about it and go do.
(11:37):
So, if you are in a world whereright now you are questioning,
am I in a customer-centricorganization?
I hope these signs will helpyou see if you really are and,
if not, lead the charge.
Start asking for that realaccountability.
Start defining success.
Use the tools, because if youcan do that, other people will
(11:59):
start picking up on your success.
A final question for you (12:01):
If you saw something broken in the
customer experience today, wouldyou feel empowered to do
something about it?
If you answer no, then you havesome work to do.
If you answered yes, you mightbe closer to a customer-centric
organization than you think.
What a fantastic question.
I love these questions comingstraight from you.
(12:23):
The customer experience changeagents out in the world making a
difference.
Our mission at ExperienceInvestigators is to create fewer
ruined days for customers, andthe way we do that is by
empowering leaders like youthrough programs like this, the
podcast we have lots of contentwith articles, of course,
LinkedIn Learning courses.
Now we have CXI Membership.
(12:44):
We have all those resources toempower people like you.
So check it out atexperienceinvestigatorscom and
don't forget you could hear yourquestion on the next Experience
Action Podcast.
Go to askjeannievip and I can'twait to hear from you.
See you next time.
To learn more about ourstrategic approach to experience
(13:08):
, check out free resources atexperienceinvestigatorscom,
where you can sign up for ournewsletter, our Year of CX
program and more, and pleasefollow me, Jeannie Walters, on
LinkedIn.
Experience Action.
Let's stop just talking aboutcustomer experience, employee
experience and the experience ofleaders.
Let's turn ideas into action.
Your host, Jeannie Walters, isan award-winning customer
experience expert, internationalkeynote speaker and founder of
Experience Investigators, astrategic consulting firm
(00:20):
helping companies increase salesand customer retention through
elevated customer experiences.
Ready Set Action.
Jeannie Walters (00:31):
It's the Experience Action Podcast, and
we have another fantasticquestion from one of you, our
listeners.
Listener Question (00:38):
Hey, Jeannie.
I've worked at companies thatsay they're customer-centric,
but it doesn't always feel thatway behind the scenes.
What are some signs that acompany is truly living that
value versus just talking aboutit?
Thanks so much.
Jeannie Walters (00:54):
Oh, I bet a lot of you can relate to this one.
We hear it all the time.
We talk to leaders and theytell us we don't really have a
customer experience team orleader or process because we are
customer centric.
Well, saying it is not enoughand yet too many organizations
(01:17):
really believe it is.
We've talked to so manyorganizations who talk to us
about how incredible theirpeople are and how everybody
puts the customer first.
But if you actually reversethat and talk to customers,
they'll often say, yeah, thepeople are great, but it's very
inconsistent.
One person calls me back rightaway, one person I have to track
(01:38):
down.
Sometimes I get differentinformation based on what
department is emailing me.
It's hard to find theinformation I want and they've
never really asked me what Iwant.
So it's very easy to becomecomplacent.
It's very easy to think thatbecause we care about our
customers, because we talk aboutcaring about our customers,
(02:00):
that that is enough.
But I'm here to tell you itisn't.
We have to stop just talkingabout customer experience.
That can't be enough.
Now, this has to be both aninternal and an external
exercise.
A truly customer-centricorganization actually applies
(02:20):
the same values, both within theorganization, how we treat one
another, how we workcross-functionally, how we show
up and make sure we areexceeding expectations within
the organization as well as toour customers.
Now that can be a little tricky, but essentially, customer
impact is built arounddecision-making.
(02:42):
We have to know what decisionsare we making that will impact
the customer experience.
Sometimes that means that whatwe do inside the organization
the customer might never see itit still has an impact on what
they experience as a customer.
So these are the signs I wantyou to look for.
(03:02):
This was such a great question.
What should we look for?
So, if you are living in anorganization right now, if you
are working within anorganization that is telling you
, oh, we are customer centric,then look for these things.
Number one the customer impactis considered as part of that
decision-making process.
We can't just have a process ina vacuum.
(03:23):
We can't silo everything.
What we decide about our supplychain management and our HR
policies and how we invoice,that has a direct impact on the
customer experience, even if itdoesn't feel that way.
Because if we change our HRpolicies around time off and we
have a bunch of grumpy employees, or maybe the opposite, where
(03:47):
we don't have employees when weneed them where we need them for
the customer.
We have to think through howwill this impact the customer
experience, because otherwiseit's very easy to make very
well-intentioned decisions thatactually don't deliver on the
idea of customer centricity.
The other thing I want you tolook for is customer feedback
that actually drives meaningfulchange.
(04:09):
Sometimes we talk to differentorganizations and the leaders
tell us oh, it's great, we'redoing all these surveys, we've
got our net promoter score, wereally have it all figured out.
But if we're not using thatinformation almost in real time
to make meaningful change forthe customers, then we are
wasting time and resources andmoney and everything else.
(04:31):
That is the hard truth.
There are so many organizationswho invest so much in customer
feedback.
They invest in the software andthe surveys.
They write these beautifulthings, they get them out, they
rewrite them, they get out more,but there is no process or even
person who is gathering thatinformation and looking for what
(04:52):
are the trends, what are ourcustomers trying to tell us,
what do they want and can wemake that happen?
If it is not driving meaningfulchange, then feedback is not
really customer-centric.
I know that's hard to hearbecause many of you are probably
doing just that.
Where you are investing inthose surveys, you are investing
(05:15):
in these robust platforms, butif you are not using the
insights and information, thenthat is not an investment, that
is just an expense.
So customer-centricorganizations use feedback on a
regular, consistent basis todrive meaningful change on
behalf of their customers.
The other thing I want you towatch for is employee
(05:37):
empowerment.
Are employees actuallyempowered to not only report
when things are not going rightfor the customer, but also to do
something about it in themoment?
Frontline employees we cannothave them just follow scripts.
We cannot have situations wherethey are not empowered to raise
(05:57):
their hand and say I see abetter way to do this.
If we don't have those thingsin place and if we don't have
that trust with them thetraining, the empowerment, the
mission around what we're doingand we can recognize those who
are doing the right things thenwe are just kind of asking
(06:17):
everybody to be a robot.
That is not customer-centric.
We need to empower people atevery level not just frontline
at every level to look forbetter ways to work together, to
be more efficient operationally, to serve the customer as well
as look at the customerexperience and think is there a
better way to do this?
(06:37):
What can we do and feelempowered to actually do that?
And you heard me mentionconsistency before, because this
is such a big part of anywinning customer experience.
Consistency builds trust.
So if we are deliveringinconsistent experiences, that
is eroding trust with ourcustomers.
We want consistency acrosschannels for our customers,
(07:01):
across teams, across the waythat they receive information.
All of that.
We cannot leave the experienceto be left to chance.
This is where proactive,meaningful, intentional design
comes in.
We need to understand thatmarketing billing operations
support every single group inour organization.
(07:23):
They understand the tone thatwe want to have.
They understand how we want toshow up for our customers.
They need to understand theclarity that we want to bring
and all of that is aligned.
If you see that sometimes as acustomer, you might get a bill,
for instance, and it might havecodes on it or acronyms and you
(07:46):
don't know what those are, andthen you get something else and
it might have different acronymson it, because that's from
marketing instead of billing.
That inconsistency erodes trustwith the organization and brand
.
So make sure that if you aretruly being customer-centric,
you are breaking down the siloseverywhere you can, especially
(08:06):
around communication with thecustomer, but silos everywhere
really chip away at a consistent, seamless customer journey.
And then we want to make surethat this is not just something
we're talking about.
This is something that ismeasured and managed.
We could walk around all dayfor years and never say the
(08:28):
words customer experience andguess what?
Our customers are still havingan experience.
We have to stop saying thatwe're doing customer experience
or that this is something thatis just happening because we're
thinking about it.
Your customers have anexperience, whether you think
about it or not, whether you'reintentional or not.
(08:49):
The trick is to be intentional,measure what matters, make sure
you understand what successlooks like so you can measure
against it, and then you need tomanage that.
People need to be heldaccountable.
We have to make sure that wehave checks in place to make
sure we are actually deliveringthe experience that we think you
(09:10):
know.
In the last several monthswe've been talking a lot about
AI and one of the things thatI've seen is that people kind of
release AI into the customerexperience and they hope for the
best.
We have to make sure that weare constantly checking in with
these new ways of working, tomake sure we are showing up on
behalf of our customers in theright way.
(09:31):
And then, of course, we want tolook at the right leading and
lagging indicators.
Things like customer effortscore can be really helpful
Transactional satisfaction rates, resolution times, customer
health scores if you're incustomer success, there are all
sorts of ways, but you have tomake sure you've defined what
success looks like so you knowwhat to measure.
(09:52):
This is what has led us todevelop our CXI Navigator
Framework, and all of that isbased on this idea that you need
the right mindset.
So, yes, we need to talk aboutit, but then you need to apply
strategy.
You need to have a real planwith real metrics, real
measurements, so you know how toadjust, how to course correct
(10:13):
and how to get to success.
That matters, and in order todeliver on that plan, you need
discipline.
You need to make sure thateverybody understands what role
they play and that there arereal accountabilities around
that role.
That's what leads to action,which is why we're in the
(10:33):
Experience Action podcast.
So think about how can youdefine that mindset.
Within our framework, we talk alot about a customer experience
mission statement that getseveryone aligned.
Then you want strategy.
We use something called asuccess strategy blueprint.
This is where we really map outwhat are the top priorities
(10:55):
around customer experience.
Otherwise, what happens iseverything is ad hoc, everything
is kind of onesie-twosie andit's not aligned and you miss
opportunities for thatconsistency and then discipline
who's doing what when?
Most of us don't have full,robust teams only dedicated to
customer experience, we rely onour influence to really get
(11:17):
things done with otherdepartments.
It helps a lot if you have realdefinitions around what you're
asking for and how to get there.
And then we want to take action.
At Experience Investigators, welike to say we have a bias
towards action, meaning stoptalking about it and go do.
(11:37):
So, if you are in a world whereright now you are questioning,
am I in a customer-centricorganization?
I hope these signs will helpyou see if you really are and,
if not, lead the charge.
Start asking for that realaccountability.
Start defining success.
Use the tools, because if youcan do that, other people will
(11:59):
start picking up on your success.
A final question for you (12:01):
If you saw something broken in the
customer experience today, wouldyou feel empowered to do
something about it?
If you answer no, then you havesome work to do.
If you answered yes, you mightbe closer to a customer-centric
organization than you think.
What a fantastic question.
I love these questions comingstraight from you.
(12:23):
The customer experience changeagents out in the world making a
difference.
Our mission at ExperienceInvestigators is to create fewer
ruined days for customers, andthe way we do that is by
empowering leaders like youthrough programs like this, the
podcast we have lots of contentwith articles, of course,
LinkedIn Learning courses.
Now we have CXI Membership.
(12:44):
We have all those resources toempower people like you.
So check it out atexperienceinvestigatorscom and
don't forget you could hear yourquestion on the next Experience
Action Podcast.
Go to askjeannievip and I can'twait to hear from you.
See you next time.
To learn more about ourstrategic approach to experience
(13:08):
, check out free resources atexperienceinvestigatorscom,
where you can sign up for ournewsletter, our Year of CX
program and more, and pleasefollow me, Jeannie Walters, on
LinkedIn.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.