Building your organizational culture around processes not only improves the efficiency and productivity of your business: creating a process-based culture is what will make your customers come back and encourage your employees to stay. Here’s how:
How Process-Based Culture Builds Customer Loyalty
A process-based culture ensures consistency.
According to Yotpo, a consumer has to make five purchases to be considered a loyal client. If you want to build a loyal customer base and give your customers a memorable experience, you should create consistency in all interactions.
Being consistent in your business operations, and in what you present and offer to your clients, will give you a competitive advantage. A process-oriented culture paves the way to standardization. This way, you are creating a culture and environment that always delivers the same process in the right way at the right time.
Continuous process improvement creates customers for life.
Companies that refuse to evolve will be outperformed by their more adaptable competitors. According to Bond Loyalty Report, 95% of loyalty program members seek to engage with their brand’s program through new and emerging technologies. Adapting to new technology or any change is one of the biggest challenges in many organizations.
You can’t just introduce a new tool and expect it to work. People usually blame tools even though they aren’t the problem: the problem lies in the implementation. For any technology to work, the people behind the process should be prepared to utilize it.
In a process-based culture, you don’t wait for a problem to come up to improve your processes: you proactively observe what needs to be improved and make changes in real-time to avoid future problems. This puts you in a better position for when business environments change. It’s easier for you and your people to adapt to new technology or any changes as a result of creating and sustaining a culture that supports learning and continuous improvement.
Instead of reacting to your environment, you will be leading the industry. Over time, by incrementally improving your processes across the customer lifecycle, you will create customers for life.
How Process-Based Culture Builds Employee Loyalty
Culture is everything. It guides how people do their work and, oftentimes, a company’s culture is what makes employees stay.
According to LinkedIn research from 2018, 70% of professionals in the U.S. would not work at a leading company if it meant that they had to tolerate a bad workplace culture.
What makes a process-based culture a strong company culture?
People stay at a company that makes them feel valued. A process-based culture encourages everyone to participate and feel seen. It carves a safe space where employees can express their ideas and see their ideas turn into action. Creating a workplace environment that encourages innovation from everyone boosts employee loyalty, confidence and willingness to go the extra mile.
Moreover, a process-based culture creates team alignment. Instead of doing things sporadically, you change as one unit. And instead of doing initiatives per department, you do it as an organization. Everyone is working towards the same goal, which creates unity within your company as a whole.
Working on one mission makes it easier for your people to see how their individual contributions fit into the greater strategy. People need to feel directly connected to what’s happening in their company in order to stay loyal and excited about their contributions. The more they see how their role fits into the bigger picture, the more they’ll feel committed to the company.
Process Creates Culture
Companies that successfully build and maintain a strong process-based culture benefit from engaged employees who are capable of delivering the same high-quality service or product the same way every time. Consistency in providing quality is key to building a loyal customer base. So if you want to have more loyal customers and employees, look first at the active processes within your company and identify areas of strength and areas of improvement. Then, involve your people and see where you go from there.
In love and respect,
Hilary Corna
