What does it mean to be customer-centric? Being customer-centric isn’t just delivering great service or responding to issues quickly. It’s about embedding the customer into every part of your business—from high-level strategies to the smallest details that show they matter. It’s making every interaction feel personal, meaningful, and memorable.
And here’s the thing: customer-centric doesn’t have to be complex. The most impactful moments often come from simple, consistent actions. These everyday efforts don’t just shape customer experiences—they reinforce a culture where putting customers first is the standard, not an exception.
To dive deeper into what it takes to build a truly customer-first mindset, we spoke with Steven Van Belleghem—renowned author, keynote speaker, and CX expert. With years of experience helping global giants refine their strategies, Steven shares practical insights on what it really takes to become a customer-centric organization. Let’s jump into the conversation.
Building a Customer-Centric Culture
Q: Steven, you've collaborated with some of the world's most respected brands—Microsoft, Disney, Booking.com, Mastercard, and Salesforce. What small changes have you seen that truly made a difference in creating a customer-centric culture?
The thing that I like about Disney, for instance, is that they have what I call symbols of customer experience. A bunch of really small things make it super tangible for everyone in the organization that the management is eager to create fantastic customer service.
It's like the Disney ice cream rule, very simple. If you're a cast member and you see that a child drops ice cream on the floor, you only have one priority left in life, and that is making sure that that child has a new free ice cream as soon as possible. It's super simple, but it makes it very clear, both internally and externally, that you're serious about customer experience, and Disney has a bunch of them.
Usually, these symbols of customer experience are very, very cheap and very easy to implement but super powerful.
Most companies make it too complex, hard to understand, and too much about procedures, but they forget the power of symbols of customer experience.
Q: From your point of view, what's the key to building a culture that genuinely puts the customer first?
The key is, without any doubt, leadership. Leadership determines whether an organization is customer-centric or not. If you look at some of the studies, senior leaders only spend about 3% of their time with customers. They're always working on internal things, which is important, of course, but then you miss out on that opportunity to connect with customers, to understand what's happening there, to build the necessary empathy, and to show that the organization cares about customers.
We're too internally focused, which is one of the biggest roadblocks to becoming customer-centric.
Q: After achieving exceptional CX, how can organizations keep that "wow factor" alive, encouraging customers to share their experiences and spread the word?
You need to work on structural acts of kindness and not random acts of kindness.
Install a rhythm where everyone knows we're gonna excel in making people happy, showing that we care by doing small things and just a little add-on now and then. And if you do that structurally, eventually, they will automatically spread the word because you will have so many people who are excited. They will start talking about you, so you don't have to ask for it. The moment that you need to ask for it means that they weren't that thrilled about it, and you need to speed up your game a little bit.
Shiny Diamond in CX
Q: Steven, your book "A Diamond in the Rough" was named by Forbes as the #1 customer service expert's top business book of 2023. What inspired you to write this book, and what advice do you have for companies looking to refine their customer experience and build a customer-first culture?
What inspired me is that I've been in the field of customer experience for more than 20 years, and I always shared ideas about strategy, changes in customer behavior, and how to think about that.
But the number one question I received is, OK, Steven, we get that, but how can we implement this? That "How question" came back so often that I decided to write a book about it.
For me, "A Diamond in the Rough" has one goal—to inspire companies to act more customer-centric from tomorrow without investing more money, time, or resources. It's really about mindset change, and I believe 100% that every company can act more customer-centric starting tomorrow by just implementing a few of the very simple ideas I share in this book.
Q: Why do you think there's often a gap between the customer experience companies aspire to deliver and what they actually provide?
Yeah, that's a good question. One of the issues is that we are more and more internally focused. Even now, with the AI evolution, you would think this is a new way to create value. No, we see it as a way to increase our internal efficiency. So every time a new opportunity pops up, the first reaction of everyone is, how can we internally do something with that? How can we become more efficient? How can we create more value for OUR company?
The goal should be to think about, or the ambition should be, how to create value for a customer in any circumstance. We are not doing that enough. We are focused on ourselves and forget that the true value lies outside our organization.
Q: How can businesses identify which areas of their CX are already shining and which need a little extra polishing?
Usually, that information is already inside the organization. Customer-facing people have a very good idea. They have all the information about the customer, but usually, they don't have the authority to do something with that. Senior leadership usually has the authority to do something with that information, but they don't have the information.
Talking to each other and making sure that leadership people spend enough time talking with customer-facing people is the best way to understand where you're shiny and where you need some extra polishing.
Creating an Offer You Can't Refuse
Q: Let's dive into your book, "The Offer You Can't Refuse." You highlight the role of societal challenges in shaping customer expectations. How can businesses begin weaving societal responsibility into their customer strategies?
This is a very important point. More and more customers expect organizations to do the right thing, not just in terms of climate change, but also to have an opinion about certain societal issues. This is a complicated, sometimes sensitive topic for organizations.
The key is to come up with something that is in line with your business and makes sense to the customer. If you can involve the customer in that process, that's even stronger because they will know. Usually, customers don't have an idea about it. But if they're involved, they know.
The last thing to say about this is that adding value to society is crucial, but it only works if you add enough value to the customer.
People don't always like to hear this, but the market still considers the customer first and society second. You can do great things for society, but if your service and offer are not good enough, the things you do for society will not have the impact they deserve.
Q: You also mentioned the next wave of customer expectations. What trends do you predict will take the central stage in 2025-2026?
AI is the thing to keep your eye on here. It will dramatically change how people buy, make decisions, and get information. Traditional search like Google search will drop its importance because people will go to something like ChatGPT to look for information. They will look for which hotels to stay in and which restaurants to go to and start their shopping journey on ChatGPT the moment we have AI agents that can act on your behalf. We may make some purchases automatically. So that is the field to look at.
All organizations are super thrilled that you can increase your efficiency with AI. Still, I want to turn that around and invite companies to think about how we can increase our customers' efficiency because of AI. The ones who understand how to play that game will be the winners in the next few years.
Balancing AI Technology and Human Touch
Q: As AI continues to reshape customer experience, how do you envision AI agents evolving over the next 2-3 years? How can businesses integrate them into CX strategies without losing the personal touch that many customers still value?
We're gonna deep dive now on AI technology and human touch. I think AI agents are gonna play a crucial role. It will start with basic things like making an appointment with the hairdresser, making restaurant reservations, buying a book, and repetitive grocery shopping. Those kinds of things will be step one, and eventually, it will evolve into complete personal assistance in every domain of our lives.
I think that everything on our phones will eventually change into an agent that will help us with our finances, lifestyle, and working out. Envision a world where we can outsource a lot of the basic stuff in our real life to agents. That will dramatically change how we buy and the expectations we have towards organizations.
How can you make sure that you keep the human touch? In 99.9% of all interactions with a company, we will look for extreme convenience, friction-free handling, and no time investment in it. But then, for 0.1% of the interactions, we will want the humans when it's super complex, super emotional, and a lot of money is involved. Usually, then, you want a human to interact with.
But the expectations will be completely different than our expectations today. It will be about the high-value interaction, and we will have to ensure we have people ready to deal with that.
Q: In a future where AI manages much of the customer interaction, how can businesses build and maintain trust with their customers, particularly with growing concerns about data privacy and AI transparency?
These are very crucial points. How will we build trust? If things work, that usually creates trust. One of the most advanced AI applications we already have today is driverless cars, like in Shanghai or San Francisco.
That's basically an AI agent that moves you from point A to point B, right? The fact that you dare to get into that car, that you even think it's cool and that it feels safe, so you put your life in the hands of an algorithm is because it seems to be working quite well. The moment it works, we have trust. As long as it only works for 90%, we will not trust it, but once the algorithm works for 100%, we will trust it. And that will be the crucial part.
Of course, transparency can help, but it's a functionality that will create trust in the customer's mind.
We don't always know how our cars, TVs, or smartphones function, but because of the fact that they work, we trust them.
Encourage Customer-Centric Action
Q: Why is it essential for every layer of an organization to prioritize customers, and how can this be effectively implemented in practice?
Eventually, the goal of a company is to create value for the customer. I don't believe in the philosophy of internal customers, where you work for each other in a company where you create different levels or hierarchies. That usually doesn't work.
An organization is a group of people that organize themselves to create value for the customer.
There's only one customer who pays the bills. If you create a mindset like that in your organization and ensure that every layer of the organization gets direct customer feedback, that is crucial. When you get direct feedback from the customer, that's when you start to build empathy. You start to build an organization that understands the value of that customer, and things change.
Q: What are some common reasons teams struggle to act on requests for greater customer-centricity, and how can leaders overcome these challenges?
People are worried about two things:
- It's gonna create an extra workload for them, and they're already super busy.
- They're afraid that if they do actually act in a customer-centric way, their boss will be angry for some reason: they spent too much time on it, it was costing them money, or because their internal report wasn't ready in time.
And if you have to choose as an employee who's mad at you, the customer, or your boss, you prefer that the customer is mad at you and not your boss because that has a big influence and impact on your life.
The credibility of a leader is crucial. Invest in a lot of small things where you show your team that if they act in a customer-centric way, they will save time because the customer will not come back to them. They will not be nagging, angry, or start a long discussion. If you're customer-centric, it usually saves time, and people think the opposite of that. Those two are crucial in becoming customer-centric.
Bringing Customer-Centricity to Life
If there's one takeaway from our conversation with Steven Van Belleghem, it's this: customer-centric isn't a tactic—it's a mindset. It's about weaving empathy and intention into every interaction, from leadership decisions to the smallest, everyday gestures. And as Steven pointed out, it's not the flashy, high-cost initiatives that leave a lasting impact—it's the consistent, thoughtful actions that show customers they truly matter.
So, where do you start? Think small, but aim big. Identify the "symbols of customer experience" in your business and encourage leadership to stay close to the frontline. Customer-centricity isn't a one-time initiative—it's an everyday practice. All it takes is a fresh perspective and a commitment to putting customers first.
