Transforming the way we work: Building a customer-centric culture at SE

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In recent years we have experienced a drastic evolution in the external environment. Digitisation, innovation and globalisation have created unprecedented change in the organisational landscape.

As the external environment evolves, there is a corresponding need to prepare for disruption, and success will be contingent on how well we respond to future challenges.

Focusing on the customer is the key to success. We are not only required to respond to customer demands, but we also need to anticipate market shifts and exceed customer expectations to remain relevant and successful.

Focusing on customers

At Schneider Electric, the customer is our priority and we emphasise that every employee has a key role to play in supporting customers and preparing the company for the future. We need to release employees from their daily operations and repurpose their time and energy for customers.

From the inside – freeing up from operations

• We challenge everyone to review the way they work, identify and eliminate tasks that do not create business value. Internal meetings, presentations, reports, administration and communication should be geared towards creating value for customers with the most efficient approach.• Leaders need to move fast in decision-making by empowering and trusting the teams to take collective accountability for final results. Leaders are expected to be role models of simplification through delegation, and challenging areas with unclear accountability and facilitating collaboration among teams.• Top management support is critical to remove roadblocks and inefficiencies caused by ineffective global processes, business models, organisation culture and so on. It is crucial for employees to regain their time for customers.• We also launched a worldwide campaign to understand and address employees’ major barriers with specific approaches.

For customers

• Transforming the way we work: Transformation is not a trend or a slogan. We need every employee to have a sense of urgency and commitment in changing the way we work to accelerate the pace of transformation for customers. Taking a new customer management approach; enhancing communication through technology; making data-driven decisions; providing a superior digital customer experience; and leveraging our diverse pool of local talent to provide an intimate customer experience, etc, are all important in fulfilling the raising customer expectations.• Boosting innovation: Simple ideas can create positive disruptions. We encourage employees to apply creative and critical thinking, experiment, take risks and move fast; cultivating our bright minds to crowdsource ideas for innovation and transformation to delight our customers.• Preparing the skills for tomorrow: As the required profile of employees evolves with the business environment, on top of proactively building advanced skills and business knowledge of our employees, we also offer a wide variety of learning options to our employees, helping them to develop to their fullest to satisfy customer needs.

As the saying goes, organisational culture eats strategy for lunch – the success of this transformation to a customer-centric culture will only happen with a genuine shift of mindset and behaviour.

By engaging employees at an early stage, helping them to understand their roles in supporting customers, inviting them to contribute solutions and walking together throughout the transformation adventure will be the keys to success.