Five things customer-centric leaders do when running a meeting.
by Tijs Besieux, PhD
I observe meetings to identify patterns in leadership and team dynamics. These insights help teams reflect and try new approaches to improve performance.
After observing 300+ team meetings across many companies, I found that customer-first leaders use specific tactics to help teams focus on customer value—whether teams serve customers directly or enable others to do so, such as legal or HR.
Here are my five favorite meeting habits of customer-centric leaders, each explained with practical steps you can try.
Habit #1: They filter the agenda by asking one question
When you invite people to submit meeting topics, consider adding a question that needs to be answered for the topic to be considered. The question: “How are our customers better off because we address this topic during the meeting?”
By consistently asking people to answer this question when preparing and submitting meeting topics, you kindly nudge them to work backward: what are our customer needs, and how do we operate to create customer value?
To do this, for example, I once helped a CHRO consistently use a single agenda slide divided into: Topic, Timebox, Purpose (‘For your information’, To discuss, or To decide), Who should be involved, and Customer impact. In doing so, she created transparency for all attendees and created a helpful vantage point to start the meeting.
A note on tough love: If you want this to become a team habit, you need to be ‘tough’ when someone submits a topic without answering the customer-centric question. Usually, a check-in before the meeting is sufficient, but if the answer doesn't come through, I recommend removing the topic from the agenda.
Habit #2: They organize a customer moment
Customer-centric leaders start the meeting with a ‘customer moment’. A brief, inspiring story on something an individual, the team, or the company did to create value for their valuable customers.
To do so, you might keep a list of big and small things you see happening around you that positively impact customers. You could also invite team members to share a customer moment, making the start of a meeting a team effort.
To structure a customer moment, tell the story in three parts: What happened and who was involved? What was the impact on the customer? How is this customer moment a positive example of the company strategy? A brewery I work with compiles these stories into a year-end book for employees and customers, emphasizing ‘togetherness’.
Keep in mind that these customer moments do not always have to be about direct impact on the customer. When I observed an HR leader share a customer moment in which redesigning an onboarding process helped product development teams become 3 weeks more productive, freeing up time to build better products for the customer. In this customer moment example, the impact of one’s work was not direct (designing a better onboarding process). Still, it enabled other teams to deliver more customer value, a real tribute to the importance of an end-to-end mindset for customer-centric leaders.
Habit #3: They invite the customer to the meeting
With customer-centric leaders running a meeting, the customer is always invited—and present! But in many cases it’s not practical to have an actual customer sit in on an internal meeting; it might not even be legal. So how do we fix that?
One of my clients is a residential construction company. As a symbol of giving the customer a seat at the table, the meeting leader brought a miniature house—about the size of a tennis ball—and put it right in the middle of the table. She would then say: “Our customer is here today as well, so let’s all make sure we use this time to create customer value.”
And at a global chemical company, a leader included a generic company email in online meetings, joining with a background image: “Thank you for having me. –The customer”.
Whether you pull up a chair and place a card on it that says “customer,” try one of the examples above, or invite an actual customer when relevant, the idea is to signal an important mindset. That is: we are here to create customer value, directly or indirectly.
Habit #4: They provide clarity on customer-centric criteria in decision-making
When making decisions in a meeting, consider explicitly giving customer impact significant weight when choosing an option. This also helps create fairness in how a decision was made, because it can be traced back to its intent to create customer value.
When advising an agri-food business, I helped the CEO develop a simple method to ensure customer impact was considered in decision-making, beyond vague slogans like “they want better quality at a cheaper price”. We made 10 credit-card-sized cards that fit easily in his wallet, representing the company’s most valuable customers. Each card listed the customer's name, along with a detailed set of their needs and desires, and their customer satisfaction score. So each time the executive committee engaged in a decision-making process, the CEO would take out the appropriate card and share it with his team. By doing so, he helped focus decision-making on what the customer really needed.
Habit #5: They wrap the meeting up with a customer-centric fist of five
At the end of a meeting, customer-centric leaders set aside a brief moment to poll attendees with one question: “To what degree did this meeting help create customer value?”
Meeting attendees answer on a one-to-five scale by simultaneously revealing their score with their fingers.
When I worked with the senior leadership of a food manufacturer, I observed that one leader added an insightful perspective to this habit. After the meeting, she would always check in with the person who gave the lowest score to understand their perspective better and gather relevant feedback to make the next meeting even more impactful for their customers.
When leading your next meeting, try one of these habits to see how it impacts your team’s ability to create customer value. Hope it helps!