The only way your company will differentiate based on customer experience is if the culture of your organization aligns closely with the brand promise to customers. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh puts it in his blog post entitled “Your Culture Is Your Brand”: “Advertising can only get your brand so far . . . So what’s a company to do if you can’t just buy your way into building the brand you want? In a word: culture. At Zappos, our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff — like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers — will happen naturally on its own.”

When Forrester looks at building a customer-focused culture, we believe firms need some precursors in place, such as a clear strategy and vision, metrics that reflect customer perceptions, and governance mechanisms that set standards and hold people accountable for changes.

Once those are in place, rewards systems are one powerful lever to keep employees focused on what’s important. My colleague Belle Bocal and I identified nine ways that companies use reward systems to build a customer-centric culture.

Celebrate Target Behavior

Many companies make the mistake of trying to tie variable compensation (e.g., bonuses) to customer experience metrics too early. What many firms have learned is that the more informal recognition programs can be even more powerful at moving culture than the compensation metrics.

Many different types of firms have channel partners or others that control a significant part of the actual experience with customers. Automobile companies have dealers, insurance and real estate firms have independent agents, software companies have value-added resellers (VARs), restaurants and hotels have franchises, and heavy equipment manufacturers have resellers. Even the brokers or financial advisors within financial services organizations can act in many ways like these external partners.

While companies may not have direct control over these partners, firms are waking up to the fact that there are ways to influence these organizations to provide a better customer experience. To ensure that partners enhance the customer experience (CX):

• Share VoC data with partners. Standard voice of the customer (VOC) programs make customer feedback data available to internal employees throughout the organization. Firms should use adapted versions of these dashboards to deliver relevant insights to partners. Deluxe, which sells services to small businesses and financial institutions, gathers customer research on the behalf of its smaller partners that cannot afford to pay for these insights on their own. Such insights gathered after the financial crisis helped many of its smaller financial services clients understand specific teller behavior that was hurting relationships more than helping.
   

Good news for those of you requesting extensions: We heard you, and we're extending the deadline for Forrester's Voice Of The Customer Award submissions to Friday, April 6th at 5:00 p.m. ET.

While I have you, here are answers to some of the questions I've been getting about the awards:

• I'm a vendor. Can I still apply? Yes — but only if your submission is about your own VoC program. We don't accept submissions from vendors on behalf of their clients.
• Does my company have to be headquartered in North America? No! This year we've gone global! We'll accept any submission, as long as it's written in English.
• Will you honor confidentiality? Yes! No matter what, we'll publish the names of the 10 finalists and three winners. But any specifics that we want to publish beyond that, we'll fact-check with you first.
• Do I have to be a Forrester client? No! We'd love to hear from you whether you're a client or not.
• Does the cover page count toward the page limit? No, we're only asking you to limit the content of the submission to seven pages.
• Can I get an extension? You already did! And no, we won't be offering any extensions beyond Friday, April 6th.

Get more details on the Forrester VOC Awards on our site.

Good luck!

Once again, I'm going to write an overview of the European interactive design agency market to help Forrester clients identify design agencies to help them with their projects in Europe. The report title will be "2012: Where To Get Help For Interactive Design Projects In Europe." Participants will receive a copy of the research and their details will be included in the report.

I would like to invite interactive design agencies in Europe to participate. Please complete the agency survey at the following location:

https://forrester.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_3ItaKu2lYfupm3G

The survey is designed to gather data from European firms that have significant experience in designing and developing digital experiences (web, mobile, etc.). Survey questions cover interactive agency size, practice areas, industry expertise, locations, and a range of costs for typical engagements. If you know any agencies that should be included in my report, please forward the survey link to them or show them this blog post.

Thank you!

P.S. If you want a preview of the survey, you can see all the questions on the following site:

https://forrester.qualtrics.com/CP/File.php?F=F_089Q1OJFXDCdXvK

UPDATE (10/May/2012): Survey deadline extension. This survey will be open until 15/May.