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Fostering a Customer-Centric Culture Across the Organization
Scaling your customer function. Let’s look at the six things you should be focusing on to get there.
Tomas
June 4th, 2025
Featured Article
So, you want to transform your org into a revenue machine. And you know your best strategy to get there is baking customer success into everything. Now how do you actually build that retention-focused culture throughout your team?
It’s Part 2 of 5 on scaling your customer function. And today, we’re talking culture shift. Let’s look at the six things you should be focusing on to get there.
Focus #1. Don’t just think ‘Support’. Think ‘Strategic Partner’.
Enterprise CS isn’t about fixing tickets—it’s about fueling growth.
Stop focusing just on operations. And start thinking about:
Revenue growth: Top CS teams drive 30-40% of new revenue through expansions. How will you get there?
Building C-level relationships: Train your CSMs to talk and think like a CEO. That means total focus on business outcomes, not just features and tools.
Aligning your teams: Embed CS in product roadmaps and sales strategies. Start encouraging cross-functional collabs.
Pro Tip: Track and broadcast CS-driven revenue. It’s the best way to start killing the “CS is a cost center” myth and rewrite the value of your team.
Focus #2. CS is a priority for everyone.
This is about instilling customer obsession throughout your whole team. To get there, you’re going to have to make it a priority.
And I’m not talking about generic internal newsletters.
I’m talking constant pressure, focus and details like this:
Train the whole damn company: Design thinking isn’t just for customer-facing teams. It needs to be top of mind for everyone, from engineering to sales to product.
Make it personal: Force engineers to watch clients struggle with your UI. Don’t let anyone lose sight of what their work actually achieves.
Constant feedback: Bring customers into roadmap decisions. If you don’t see room for improvement, you’re not either not asking the right questions or you’re not listening to the answers.
Focus #3. Incentivize cross-functionality.
Departments butting heads? Customers lose.
Fix it with a little positive reinforcement:
Teams that solve problems together stay together. Choose a current at-risk account and send reps from each team–Sales, Support, and Product–to find a joint solution.
Tie bonuses to shared metrics. Renewal rates aren’t just CS’s problem—make Sales sweat them too.
Try rotations. Set up a program to move high-potential employees across functions. They’ll land in senior roles with better empathy, trust and connections across your teams.
Pro Tip: Make sure you don’t accidentally penalize good decisions. Did Sales screen out an unfit client before reaching CS? That’s a good thing in the long run, so treat it that way.
Focus #4. Incentivize outcomes, not outputs.
Activity does not equal success!
Instead, start measuring the stats that matter. Like…
Customer Health Scores–Predict churn before it happens.
Product Adoption Depth–Are they using 20% or 80% of features?
Then, tie pay to actual value delivered:
CSMs: Base comp on net revenue retention, not cases closed.
Sales: Penalize churn on new accounts to help focus on quality conversions.
Product: Link bonuses to customer-reported innovation impact.
Focus #5. Design the whole system for customer satisfaction
Build structures that force customer-first decisions. Before any new launch, transition or investment—ask yourself how it’s going to support your customers and your bottom line.
Here’s where I see people get lost on this:
Too much attention to ‘shiny and new’ – instead of on the fixes that actually remove customer friction.
Feature launches – that aren’t based on a clear customer pain justification.
Pushing new initiatives – without consulting CS on how they could harm customer health.
Stay clear on what really matters, and you’ll avoid expensive distractions.
Focus #6. Get everyone in on the feedback loop.
When a client complains, it should be all hands on deck. Feedback is gold–and way more helpful to you than a disengaged customer.
When you get the opportunity to act on feedback, don’t blow it. Build a system for responding like this:
React right away: Acknowledge the feedback, then show the fix in your next roadmap. Touch base afterwards to see how it’s working.
Keep the relationship close: Hand-write apology notes from execs for major screw-ups. Stay in touch throughout the solution process. Don’t let them be the first to follow up.
Note common pain points: Same feedback more than once? Get clear on the top 3 customer headaches, then build in features to fix them for everyone.
Alignment on your team is everything
Customer-centricity isn’t a project or a strategic sprint—it should be baked into your company culture. Preach it in every meeting, build it into your onboarding, pay for it in every comp plan, and engineer it into every process.
If you can create a team of customer obsession, not only are you going to see better collaboration, better productivity, and better results—you’re going to see higher NRR across the board.
Next week we’re looking at leveraging technology and data to drive Customer Success.
P.S. I’m currently developing a playbook complete with templates for customer health scorecards, incentive alignment grids, and feedback loop systems. These aren't quite ready for release yet. However, if you're interested in getting early access and helping us beta test them over the next couple of months, connect with me on LinkedIn!
Tomas
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