How To Build A Customer Centric Culture In Your Business

Running a business in Vietnam is faster and more competitive than ever before. You likely spend a lot of time thinking about your product or your sales numbers. But there is one thing that matters more than anything else. That thing is your customer.

We hear companies say they love their customers all the time. It is easy to say the customer is always right. It is much harder to actually build a business that lives by that rule every single day. This is what we call a customer-centric culture.

What Is A Customer Centric Culture?

A lot of teams treat customer centricity like polite customer service and a few nice brand messages. That is surface-level stuff. A customer centric culture sits deeper, and it shows up in decisions, budgets, priorities, and what people get rewarded for.

At its core, it means two things at the same time. It is a business strategy that aims to build long-term preference, not just short-term sales. It is a company-wide operating mindset that asks one question before shipping anything, changing any policy, or launching any campaign. 

How will this feel for the customer at that moment?

The “feel” part is not fluffy. Emotional connection gets created through predictable experiences. Clear promises. Fast fixes when things go wrong. Most companies believe they do this well, then reality hits. In one survey of 362 firms, 80% of leaders believed they delivered a superior experience, yet only 8% of customers agreed. That gap is what customer centricity tries to eliminate.

A real customer centric culture runs on data and insight, not gut instinct. Customers now expect brands to remember preferences, keep context across channels, and stop sending irrelevant offers. 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when that does not happen. So the organization builds systems to capture signals, connect them, and turn them into actions that make sense to a human.

That is why customer centricity cannot live only inside marketing. Product teams need it when they decide what to build next. Ops need it when they set delivery and return rules. Finance needs it when they approve support headcount and tooling. HR needs it when they hire and train people who can handle messy customer moments without hiding behind scripts.

Why Is Organizational Culture So Difficult To Change?

You might wonder why more companies do not do this already. The truth is that changing a company culture is very hard work.

Organisations are like giant ships. It takes a lot of planning and effort to change their direction. Even small adjustments early on can have huge effects later.

Companies have tried to adopt customer centricity for nearly twenty years. Yet very few marketers say their company really focuses on it. There are a few reasons for this struggle.

First, there is simply too much data. The amount of information we have about customers today is overwhelming. Many organizations do not know how to handle the volume and variety of data. They might lack the systems to sort through it all. They cannot profile their customers correctly because they do not have the right technology.

Second, many companies are stuck in old ways of thinking. They are product-focused or sales-driven. They think about what they want to sell rather than what the customer wants to buy. They might think customer centricity is just a job for the customer support team.

To succeed, you need a culture that aligns with your strategy. You need leaders who deliberately cultivate this mindset in every single employee.

The Big Benefits Of Putting People First

The business upside is not subtle. Retention economics are brutal in a good way. A 5% increase in retention can lift profits by 25% to 95%. That happens when repeat customers buy more, cost less to serve over time, and recommend you without being asked. Acquisition costs make the case even stronger. Acquiring a new customer can cost 5 to 25 times more than keeping an existing one. Customer centricity reduces churn, lowers refund pressure, and improves conversion through trust, which helps protect margins when ads get pricier or competition heats up.

Customers do not give you endless chances. 32% of customers say they would stop doing business with a brand they love after just one bad experience. That means “one broken moment” can erase months of marketing spend. On the upside, great experiences let you charge more without feeling scammy. Research shows up to a 16% price premium is possible when the experience feels valued and friction-free. That premium is not only for luxury brands. It shows up anywhere customers care about speed, convenience, confidence, and being treated like a person.

Customer centricity creates second-order benefits too. It makes word-of-mouth more likely, since customers share stories, not features. It makes teams faster, since fewer fires get escalated and fewer launches need emergency patches. It improves product-market fit, since decisions get grounded in real behaviors instead of internal opinions.

For service businesses and subscriptions, the compounding effect can be even stronger. When onboarding is personal, support is proactive, and customers feel listened to, churn drops and expansion grows. In that world, customer centricity is not a “nice brand idea.” It is a profit model that happens to feel human.

6 Ways To Build A Customer Centric Culture For Your Business

We know that this culture is important. The big question is how you actually build it. You cannot just tell your team to care more. You need to take specific actions.

Here are six practical steps you can take to build a customer-centric culture in your business.

Operationalize Customer Empathy In Your Daily Work

Empathy is a word we hear a lot in business. It sounds good but few companies really understand it.

Customer empathy is the ability to identify a customer’s emotional need. You have to understand the reasons behind that need. Then you must respond to it effectively. This is rare. Research shows that very few consumers feel that employees understand their needs.

To make empathy real, you have to operationalize it. This means making it a part of your daily processes.

Look at how Slack does this. Slack is a famous business communication tool. Their employees spend a lot of time reading customer messages. They observe customers to try to guess what they want and need.

They encourage their support specialists to research the people they are helping. They create mini personas for them. This helps them understand how the customer is using their software. Slack also looks for support people who know how to express empathy in writing. They do not allow their team to just cut and paste canned responses.

They even help their partners practice empathy. They suggest best practices like outlining use cases and storyboarding interactions. This ensures that everyone who touches the product is thinking about the user’s feelings. You can do this too by asking your team to really study the people they serve.

Hire For Customer Orientation From The Start

You cannot build a customer-centric culture if you hire people who do not care about customers. You need to make this a priority from the very first interview.

This approach should involve your whole team. Your marketing and human resources executives should work together on this.

Take Hootsuite as an example. They are a social media management platform. During their interview process, hiring managers must ask every candidate a specific question. This question gauges their customer orientation.

They do this regardless of the role. It does not matter if the person is applying for sales or engineering or finance. They all get asked about the customer.

This practice does two things. First, it assesses the candidate. It ensures that every new employee aligns with customer-centric thinking. Second, it sends a clear message to everyone. It tells recruits and hiring managers that the customer experience is important at this company.

When you hire at The Sentry or for your own startup, add this step. Make sure every person you bring on board understands that the customer is the boss.

Democratize Customer Insights For All Employees

For every employee to adopt this mindset, they must understand the customers. You cannot keep customer data locked away in one department.

Often, companies store customer understanding in the sales or marketing groups. They expect other departments to focus only on their specific functions. This is a mistake.

Adobe Systems is a great example of how to fix this. They opened up access to customer insights for all employees. They created a new department that combined customer and employee experience. This team facilitates customer understanding for everyone.

They set up listening stations. Employees can go online or to an office to listen to real customer calls. This lets them hear the frustrations and the joys of the users directly.

Adobe also includes customer updates in every all-employee meeting. Leaders give an update on the company’s customer experience delivery. This keeps the customer front and center for the whole organization.

You should try to do the same. Share feedback with your product team. Let your developers see the support tickets. When everyone has access to the insights, everyone can make better decisions.

Facilitate Direct Interaction With Customers

Companies need to develop ways for employees to interact with customers directly. This is important even for people who work in back-office functions.

Every employee impacts the customer experience in some way. It might be indirect, but it is there. Every employee benefits from interacting with customers. They can learn about their successes and their challenges.

Airbnb does this very well. They consider their hosts to be customers. They require their employees to stay in Airbnb rentals whenever they travel for business. This forces the employee to experience the product just like a customer does.

They also ask employees to let hosts stay with them when they attend meetings at the Airbnb offices. Employees participate in an annual event alongside hosts. They discuss what they learned from the past year and plan for the next.

Your business model might not allow for this exact setup. But you can still facilitate interactions. Let your employees observe focus groups. Let them listen in on sales and support calls. Take them on customer visits. Invite them to attend industry conferences.

When your team meets the people they serve, the work becomes personal. They start to care more about the outcome.

Link Employee Culture To Customer Outcomes

There is an old saying that you cannot manage what you do not measure. This applies to culture too.

Managers will be more motivated to cultivate this culture if they see the results. You need to show them how it impacts the business. You should establish and track the link between your culture and your customer impact.

IBM found a strong connection here. Their head of HR noted that employee engagement drives a huge portion of their client experience scores. This proves something intuitive. If employees feel good about the company, the clients will feel good too.

Other consulting firms have created models to estimate this impact. They calculate how much revenue a company can gain by improving the customer experience. Modest improvements like reducing wait times can lead to millions of dollars in gains.

You should measure these things in your business. Look at how your employee satisfaction scores match up with your customer satisfaction scores. Show your team that a happy workplace leads to happy customers. This gives everyone a concrete reason to improve the culture.

Tie Compensation To The Customer

Finally, you should put your money where your mouth is. You should reinforce this culture through your compensation program.

Donna Morris at Adobe calls this giving every employee skin in the game. She says that employees need to know that customer-oriented behaviors are expected. There has to be an element of risk to it.

Adobe implemented a compensation program that ties every employee to the customer. Their short-term cash incentive plan reflects the company’s revenue performance. But it also reflects customer success measures such as retention.

This program makes the contribution of every employee tangible. It produces alignment across the whole organization. Everyone is working toward the same goals.

You can do this on a smaller scale. You could offer bonuses based on customer satisfaction scores. You could celebrate wins when a customer renews their contract. When you pay people based on customer happiness, they will focus on making customers happy.

Create Your Own Customer Centric Culture Today

Building this culture takes time and effort. But the results are worth it.

You need to think about where your customers are. One way to become more customer-centric is to be physically present where they are. If you have customer bases in different regions, you might need a satellite office.

This can help you build support hubs that are local to your clients. You can be ready when they are awake. You can speak their language.

This is where a flexible workspace becomes a powerful tool for your business. It allows you to adapt and move quickly. You can position your team exactly where they need to be to serve your people.

At The Sentry, we understand this mindset because we live it. We have built a space designed to help businesses thrive. We offer the flexibility you need to focus on what matters most.

Our workspaces are more than just desks. They are communities where you can connect and grow. We handle the logistics so you can handle your customers. We provide the environment where your culture can flourish.

If you are ready to take your business to the next level, you need the right space. You need a partner who understands the value of putting people first.

Book A Tour At The Sentry

The best way to understand how we can help you build your culture is to see it for yourself.

We invite you to visit us at The Sentry. Walk through our spaces and feel the energy. See how other customer-centric businesses are working and growing here in Vietnam.

Our team is ready to show you around. We can discuss a workspace solution that fits your team perfectly.

Book a tour today.