S1E6: Customer First, what does it take? How to build one ?

Good morning, leaders. Wake up, smell the coffee. It's 6:30 in the morning somewhere in the world. Welcome to the Irreverent Bold Unfiltered podcast and videocast about leadership. You want to move your career to the next level?

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You found the right place. Let's get going, shall we? All right, all right, all right. Welcome back. It's been a busy week since last show, and we have a very interesting topic. I didn't find the topic, actually. Peter, who I will introduce in a few minutes, As we were going the first episodes of the podcast, ping me and say, hey, I've got a topic that I really want to talk about. And he sent me the topic. I really love the topic. And I said, okay, fine, let's do that. And what is the topic? The topic is, what does it take to build a customer-first, customer-obsessed organization/company? You'll see that Peter has a passion for that, even more passion than I have, which is great. And we'll talk about that. And the reason why I thought it would be a great topic is I think, and Peter, you'll let me know afterwards what you think about that, but I think there is a lot of hypocrisy in the system. I mean, I've been working for all the companies that I've been working for. I'm not going to name them, but you know who they are. Go to LinkedIn. Customer first in their values. I have to be honest, I would say none of them were trained. It's not that they were taking customer like crap, that they were not truly customer-first organization, right? And I think it takes, and Peter will talk about that, I think that it takes a really specific action And really specific views to build a real customer-first and customer-focused organization, really taking customer as number one. But again, a lot of companies say they are. I'm very sadly telling people it's not true. It's not true. They have something else. And we'll talk about that in chapter 1. I just mentioned chapter. There's 2 chapters. The first one is Peter and I will talk about how do you know, how do you recognize, what are the characteristics of a customer-first organization? Chapter 2 is, okay, now that we know what it looks like, how do you become one? What are the things? What are the facts? What are the actions? What are the people? Everything that you put in action in order to have a real customer-first organization. But first, let me introduce Peter. So, Peter and I go back 15 years when he was at ServiceSource, and I was using that company to outsource renewals. And he was the lead in Asia-Pac because, believe it or not, Peter is from Asia. No, I'm kidding. He's Danish, but he's been living for 25 years almost in Singapore. So, I think he's extremely Asia-Pac. And as I know because I live there and he knows better than I do, it's so diverse that you cannot put one name behind Asia. And I'm so happy, even if it's late for me in California and early for him in Singapore, to have both of us here that we have an Asia-Pac also presence in the show. So, before we go into chapter 1, Peter, anything that you want to tell Uh, the audience about yourself and also about the topic.

Sure. First and foremost, Christophe, thank you for having me. It's, it's a great pleasure to link up with you this way again, and, and I really love your podcast. Um, as you said, I, I've been in Singapore for many, many years. Um, you know, 24 years of managing high-performance sales teams here and both growing companies in the direct and indirect sales. Uh, there's a recipe to it, and that is, you know, first and foremost, how do you, how do you engage with your customers? How do you create a culture in your team that focusing on customer experience as well as what are the, what, what is the outcome, the value that we are bringing to a customer? And when you start putting that first across an organization, for me, that's when the growth happens. So, That's a bit of my background. Yeah.

And something, so Peter mentioned it, but I want to outline it for the audience. I could have taken somebody from the customer success organization or the customer service organization. Peter is a damn sales guy. He's been in sales for as long as I've been in sales. And that kind of removed the myth that in order to be customer-focused, you have to come from the post-sales world. No, you can be a customer-focused and a customer-first person even if you try to sell them something. It's not an or, it can be a and. So, I'm really glad to have Peter as a salesperson explaining and talking about customer-first. I think it's super powerful.

Thank you.

So, chapter number 1, how do you recognize a customer-first, a customer obsessed organization. And why does it matter before I ask the question to Peter? Why does it matter? So, not my research, not my thoughts, something which is very common is usually companies are only from 3 categories. You have the product-led company, i.e., the way they grow, the way they live, the way they breathe is through products.

Yeah.

You want example? Apple, Tesla, they're a product-led company. You have the sales-led company. It's how do you sell, of course, your product and, of course, to customer, but the main thing that is motivating the day-to-day job and the day-to-day work of the company is how you sell that, your products to customers. So, that's a company like back in the days, Xerox. Totally sales-oriented organization. Closer to us, Walmart in the US, the product is not really differentiated, but how they were successful is by selling and then optimizing their selling motion. And then, you have the customer-led organization. There's not a lot of them actually, but they exist. And Nordstrom or Ritz-Carlton are aware. Ritz-Carlton got bought by Marriott and changed a bit in their philosophy, but they're really customer-led in everything they do. So, all the companies that I just talked about, super successful. So, it's not that one is better than the other. And actually, if you want to be successful, you have to be number one in this and then making sure that your product and your sales organization is working. But, What, how do you recognize, what are the characteristics of a customer-first, customer-focused, uh, organization? Peter, do you have an answer to that?

I do. Uh, and, and it's funny that you, you mentioned Ritz-Carlton because back in the days I used to stay with Ritz and, and it's just such a, a great company. We are not here to make a commercial for them, but, but it sort of sets out You know, when you are really customer focused, you know everything about your customer. And that is not only the one who meets the customer in the front desk or, or wherever, it's everybody in the entire organization. And I think when, when I look at, at how to describe if you are a customer-first organization, uh, how do you treat a customer? How do you engage with them? And if you have a customer, which happened to me sometimes, uh, as a vice president, you just got on board and, and say, uh, customers reach out to you and say, we'd really like to meet with you. And you go to your team and say, who is this account belonging to? And, and let's go and meet them. And, and the account manager says, uh, you know, don't worry about that, Bob, because it's, it's not worth it. They don't have money and they're only gonna complain. That to me shows exactly what it is that you are not focused on the customer. You want to serve the customer in the best way possible. You, you want to, uh, put an attention to them whenever they reach out to you. And, and, and hopefully you would be reaching out to them proactively as well. And then you'd have an organization behind you that is working with you to solve customer problems because the customers, they'll obviously tell you when they're happy, but you know, 10 times more they'll tell you when they're unhappy. And that, that's when push really comes to shove. That says, you know what, we know how to handle this as an organization and we know how to deal with any issues to get the customer happy again. And I think that differentiates a customer-led company.

You, you say something that I want to go back to because I think it's, it's, it's super important. You said, hey, it's not, And if I got it wrong, let me know, right? But you said, hey, it's not the responsibility of one function, is that everybody in the company has to be customer obsessed, right? And I totally— so first, did I capture well what you said?

Yes.

Yeah, okay. So, it kind of sounds obvious, but it's not as obvious. Like, So, let me ask you a question. And as everybody knows that there is no prepared question, so Peter didn't have the time to think about it, just popping up in my mind. That means also that the finance organization has to be customer-focused, right? How can a finance organization, and I can also pick on HR, so people that are normally internally focused, right? But how a finance organization, how do you recognize that a finance organization works for a very customer-oriented, a very customer-focused, uh, company?

Well, I mean, first of all, there's probably degrees of how much any organization is, is involved in a customer and, and providing a customer experience, right? And I, I'd say finance and HR are probably on, on the lower side of the percentages, if you will.

Mm-hmm.

But having said that, you know, it does happen that the customer says, look, you know, I have problems with my invoice. Uh, you know, I, I have problems with orders. And at that point, again, it comes to the individual that, that, you know, gets in touch with the customer and to say, look, Mr. Customer, Mrs. Customer, I will help you solve this problem. And, and not say that's probably a sales problem, somebody else's problem, and they will have to deal with it. And I think That's the, is the whole thing of not outsourcing to other parts of the business.

Right.

And, and I, I, I heard this, I heard this, um, uh, this saying just a while ago. A customer is anyone who's not me. Right.

Wow.

Which I love that. Which is very, it's very important here, right? Because if you think about that, whether it's internal or external, A customer is a customer, right? And you are there to help other people.

Well, you got me thinking on that one. A customer is anybody, everybody but me, right? So, it's like, yeah, it's like my coworker is a customer. Everybody who's around me. So, if I'm customer-focused, if I'm customer-obsessed, then outside of myself, everybody else is a customer, right? I love that. I love that. I love that. We'll capture that in the summary of the podcast for sure. So, kind of a similar question, but closer to you and I. Do you think that there is a difference between a sales team working for a customer-focused organization and any other sales team?

Yes, I think there is, because it all comes back to how are you selling? Right. And we are probably gonna talk about this also when, when we start, you know, talking about how to build that.

Yeah.

Uh, but I, I think, uh, as a, as a salesperson, there, there are various ways of selling. Uh, in my mind, you need to look at the customer problem, right? And you need to make sure that you understand what is it that we are providing to the customer? How is it that we are generating value and outcomes for that customer and not try to shuffle something down his throat. That might or might not be needed, right? But you wanna tell Cyber to me, right? So, you know, I, I've been in organizations where it, it, it was okay to say, look, Mr. Customer, I think what you're looking for is not something that I have at the moment, but I know somebody who can help you. And by doing that, you create a customer relationship where the customer actually says, look, that was really powerful. I'll definitely come back to Peter and his team in the future when I do see the need for their technology. Right. And I think that's the mindset that you have to think about when you are customer first, that it's all about the customer, what he needs, and not necessarily your, your sales target.

Yeah, no, that's that. I'm, I'm, I'm glad for you. I, I didn't work for such a company where, you know, there was not a mandate, but a, a, a direction that, hey, you can, you can, redirect customers to other solutions if our solution is not resolving their business problem. But, that's great. It's like, and to your point, then you build a relationship and a trust between you and your customer that it's not even a customer anymore, it's a partner. And then, of course, longer term, you know that you're going to see it in more business from that customer, right? Because—

Absolutely.

There's nothing more powerful than trust. Right, basically. You and I have something in common is that we were both born in Europe and raised in Europe, not exactly the same country, one colder than the other, but we were both in Europe. And then, you moved to Asia and I had a bit of time in Asia, but I moved to the U.S. essentially. The question here is, do you think that the cost— and I really don't know what answer is, so I'm not leading any answer here, but do you think that the concept of customer-first and customer orientation varies depending on the culture, the country, or is it something universal?

I think you're spot on there, right? One of the things that is not often recognized is channel partnerships here in In Asia, so if you're a U.S.-centric company going to Asia, you don't necessarily focus on building a channel. But here in Asia, it's all about relationships, and it's about building out channel partners that you might not need them, you might not want them, to be honest. But at the end of the day, they sit with the relationships that can make you successful with a given customer. And so sometimes you're forced to partner even though you might or might not want it. And then it's about finding that optimal state of what, what's in it for you and me and everybody, you know, because I also don't wanna pay a partner fee for nothing. But at the same time, you know, uh, paying, paying for somebody to broker a relationship is not a bad thing if it leads to something great. So coming back to, to your question, Definitely there is, there is a, um, there's a difference around the globe in terms of how you engage with customers and, and how you create that, that culture of, of a great customer experience. And, and I don't think that there's a one-size-fits-all, unfortunately. It would be fantastic if there is. I know there's a, a, you know, having been in customer success, uh, type roles, account management roles in the past, I know how important this is.

Yeah.

to look after your customer. Uh, and there's great work being, being done, uh, around the globe in, in that. But there's no single, uh, one-size-fits-all. If, if, if there is, it's about, you know, a couple of things in my mind. It's about creating that relationship with trust that, that basically drives the partnership and then focusing on your, your customer and, and the experience that he has. That's probably as much as we can summarize it, but there will always be nuances country-wise and culture-wise.

Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to have, maybe it's my dream, but I'd love to have on a podcast one day, you know, an exec from Ritz-Carlton because they do, they did have that problem, right? They're, to me, you know, really customer-focused. They were, I mean, they still are, but less since the Marriott acquisition, but they were really obsessed about customers and they had that cultural problem because they had hotels in New York and hotels in Cambodia or in Japan, right? Which triggered— I'm going to take an anecdote to you and the audience about Ritz-Carlton and why I'm obsessed with that. So, I had a boss, it was back in the BMC days, great guy. I hope I get him on the podcast one day. We are at a Ritz-Carlton for a kickoff or something like that in Florida. And, Ritz-Carlton had an agreement with Pepsi, not with Coke, but with Pepsi. And, Paul, my boss, is a Coke-only guy and a Diet Coke-only guy. That's it. That's the only thing that he was drinking. Coke Zero was not available in the market yet. And, he asked for a Diet Coke and they said, well, sorry, but we're Pepsi shop. Do you mind? He said, yes, I mind. Yeah, but that's fine. Give me a Pepsi Max or whatever the equivalent was. They give it to him, but it took about less than an hour that they show up with Diet Coke for the remaining of everything. And they had it available everywhere in the hotel, which is already good, right? Because they basically forget about the company policy, forget about who's the vendor. They probably went to a supermarket somewhere in Florida and got Diet Coke. But the story doesn't end there because that's already good. But he shows up in India at the Ritz-Carlton a month after. I kid you not, they had Diet Coke for him. Okay, we were a big company, BMC, but it followed him everywhere he went. They had Diet Coke for one customer. For one customer, right? So, that's what customer obsession is, right? So, that's how you recognize a customer-first organization. So, before we move on chapter 2, something that I wanted to say and kind of give to the audience on how do you recognize and what are the characteristics of a customer-first organization. To me, there are 3 things. Yeah. That you need to ask yourself. When you see customer first in the values of the company and you go, hey, is my company, the job that I just joined or that I've been working for 10 years, is really customer-focused? I think there's 3 things that you should be looking at. First, and I'm not going to make a lot of good friends with that, is where somebody in the company an officer of the company that has customer something in his or her title. If you work for a company that says, hey, I'm customer first, but there is not like chief customer officer or customer experience officer or whatever, that's a good indication that's not true, right? And I mean a real officer, somebody who's reporting into the CEO, not somebody that has a title just to say, hey, I'm customer-oriented. That's the first thing. The second thing, which maybe I'm ready to say, hey, if you don't have that, that's okay. You're on your way. You're on your path, is whether or not you have a customer experience team. Not a customer success team, not a customer service team, but people that are looking across the entire company on the processes that you need to change. And they usually call the customer experience something like that. But it's a very mature company. The last one, and this is where I'm not going to make friends, is with whom the CEO is spending most time. If you have a CEO that says, hey, we're customer first, and that he or she spends most of the time with the product person or the product organization, you're a product-led organization. You're not a customer-led organization. If he or she spends Most of the time with the sales leader, it's not a customer first. It's a sales-led organization. If he or she spends the most time with finance, God help you because that's only about selling the company or putting on IPO or whatever. So, if you're not a big shareholder, you're not going to get a benefit. Really not going to have a lot of friends tonight. But if The CEO is spending most, well, most, the majority of the time with people in the customer organization, that means that you're really in the customer-first organization. So, you have 2 yes and 1 maybe, but that's kind of the pointer. All right, chapter 2, what does it take, Peter? What does it take to build a real customer-first organization? How do you build one? Leadership.

Leadership. There, there is, there, there's one key thing here, and that is leadership. And, and it comes back to the CEO because as you say, if the CEO is focused on all other things than, than the customer, that's the first, you know, at least yellow flag, if not red flag that you have. But I'd also say drill it down on a, on a regional basis, right? You can, you can train people. To, to, um, you know, focus on customers. You can tell people in your all hands, in your email communication, everything that customers first mindset, this is what we need to. And then as customer problem arises and, you know, it's just left to, to, uh, lower ranking people to solve it. That's not a good thing. That, that's really, you know, where I, I tend to see changes when you start as a leader to engage and say, look, tell me about this problem. How can I help fix it? How can I, how can I get to the customer and talk to them and understand their side of the fence? Because you, what usually happens internally is that people say, yeah, but the customer's wrong. I said, well, let's just listen to the customer and, and see if, if we can understand why he believes that certain things are. Uh, and not our, uh, and, and create the problem for him. But if you, if you just leave that to your team and say, look, you gotta go in and, and, uh, fix this, then it's, you're never gonna get to that ultimate state of having a customer-first mentality. It's very, very powerful when you start as a leader and, and start pulling a few people in your organization to help solve problems. And once other people in the organization says, I saw what happened here, that was really great. And, and if that's how management want us to, um, to work with customers in the future, gradually they start, um, they start changing. But it all comes with the leader, you know, whether it's the, the, the, the, the leader in the office. And, and that can be many. It can be the sales leader, it, it can be a country manager. Whomever. But if the most senior people in the office does not have that mentality of thinking about customers first and helping proactively roll up the sleeves and get stuff done for a certain customer and engaging, then your team will never go the, the extra mile.

Yeah. I, I'd like to bounce back on something you just said because I think, I think it's super important. The mentality, right? Is it something you believe is you have it or you don't have it? So that means that you need to make sure that you hire the right people because they have the gene or they don't have the gene. Or is it something that you can develop and train people into Or somewhere in the middle, I don't know, but is it something that you acquire or is it something that either you have it or you don't have it?

That's a very good question. Um, as a good consultant, each consultant, I pay the pen. Well, look, I, I think, to be honest, I, I think there are people that are better at customer experience, creating a customer experience and focusing on a customer. There are people that are, are better at engaging with other people, right? Uh, and as a result, it comes more natural. Uh, if you've played, uh, engaging with people, if you are an extrovert, you probably are more, um, you know, inclined to, to go the extra mile for the customer as, as opposed to, oh my God, I need to talk to a customer. I've never done that before. All right. And that's where the leadership comes in again then and say, okay, you might not know what to do in a certain situation. Let me help you. Let me show you the way.

I think I agree with you, which if I try to rephrase to make sure that we're on the same page is that it takes some, and maybe it's DNA-based or genes or whatever. And you said, hey, extroverts maybe It's maybe easier for them to be customer-oriented because of the connection. Well, the connection, easier for them to connect, well, to connect, to talk to people. But I'm sure there is great customer-oriented people that are introvert. But yeah, I can see the connection. So, what you're saying is, hey, you have to have those basic requirements that you're not going to acquire them if you don't have them.

Yeah.

But then you can train people up and develop people into that direction. Is it what you're saying or?

No, I think that's not the right way of taking it away. I think that all people can be customer-focused, right? There is various levels of how obsessed you are with a customer, right? And that's okay. I think the key to unlock success here Is as a, as a leader, but also as an individual, you need to be upfront with what you're comfortable with and, and what you can provide. And there's no fault in, in saying, look, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to, if, if we go back to the finance example before, uh, and a finance manager that says that, that you come, uh, and say, look, we need to fix something for the customer. Can you please give them a call? There's no, um, no wrong in saying, look, I've never spoken to a customer before. How do I do this? Okay. As a good leader, you then say, let's take the call together then.

Yeah.

Right? Let me set up a call and I participate and, and help facilitate the call, but I need you on it to, to, to help me here. Right? And that shows both the leadership, but it's also about changing that attitude that it's okay to recognize that You might not have what it takes, and we can obviously put you in a, in a training room, but that doesn't necessarily get you an expert tomorrow. What it does get you an expert is that you start experiencing how other people are behaving in similar situations. Yep. And that drives the change.

So I, I, I've told you, I'm, I'm completely in agreement with you. The thing is, I think you're describing stuff that is about processes and things that are much more cultural. So, what's the most— and as always, you need both, right? If you need to empower people, then they need to understand what the guidance is in terms of the empowerment. And so, when you have to train them, it's all about business process, but also, it's like if you're not customer-oriented by nature, then you don't become one. But which one is most important, do you think? Is it to be culturally aligned to customer obsession, or is it something that you drive through business processes and reinforcing processes?

It has to be the first. It has to be culture obsession for sure. And let me give you an example. You know, I had a challenge with culture and in a very siloed organization in the past. And, and there was not necessarily focus on the customer itself.

Right.

So what we decided was to establish a culture club. And that sounds a bit like, wow, culture club, that's, you know, but what we really did was we took leaders in the, the various parts of the business and then we identified change agents. in the business that we knew were key people that could help change the culture. And then we just defined, you know, as, as a company, what's, what's the role model behavior, right? So what's the perfect, uh, person gonna do here in this company? And then we drill that down per organization. So whether you had pre-sales, you had marketing, you had finance, operation, um, but drill down, how do we behave and, and what is the things that we wanna leave in the past? Right. And, and one of the things that people always come back to is, well, we, we used to do it like this. We used to do it this way. And, and that's what sometimes you need to say this, we, we need to leave this in the past and move on.

Right.

And that really helped us in, in, you know, changing the way that people were behaving and the way we were interacting with customers. And it changed the culture to a more collaborative environment. Much more based on teamwork, much more based on, you know, customer-first mentality, which helps us obviously. What does it lead to? Growth, of course.

Of course. Of course. Hey, I'd like to link that conversation to one of the previous podcasts. Actually, it was the, the previous podcast, uh, which was discussing about, you know, generational difference. And I wonder, I wonder if customer focus means the same thing across generations. Of course, obviously, you and I are from the same generation, the young and good-looking one.

Definitely.

But do you think that if you want to implement a customer-first culture, because I agree with you, culture is probably the main driver here, does it have to take into account that Customers that are 20 years old are different than the 40 years old and are different than the 50 years old, or it's like, you know, that's something that is, it's kind of the same, you apply, not apply the same recipe because it's not a recipe, but the same thing works on everybody, or there is a, you and I have kids, we can see the difference. Do you think that it's the same process for everybody?

I think it's a very, very powerful question in that sense. I think as, as a leader, I would have hoped that you have changed over the years, right? Because as in your, your, um, podcast about generations, you know, there are different, um, there are different things about each generation that, that stands out to each other. Uh, but as a leader and, you know, leaders from, from our age, You know, I think to be successful, you need to adapt to the changes, uh, when, when you have different generations comes in and different technologies and different ways of behaving. Because guess what? The customer's also changing, right? The way to interact with a customer.

Exactly.

You know, in even 10, 15 years ago, you would never, uh, have dreamed about sending a, a, a text, a WhatsApp, uh, you know, to a customer. And today that just the way business is. You just constantly communicate with your customer in a different way than you did that back then. Uh, so I, I think that, you know, yes, you have to be aware of the different generations and there are probably some generation gaps that where, where you're, you're sitting with, um, you know, especially our generation. I, I, I need to not make, uh, I need to make friends here and, and yet I will not. There are probably some people who have been in, in a role for 20 or 30 years.

Yeah.

And it would be hard for them to change the mindset all of a sudden because we've always done it this way. Why do I need to do it in a different way? And if they haven't been able to adapt to the changes in, in both how customers are, um, behaving, but also how our people are behaving and generations are behaving, then I think they will struggle. And, and that's where, as a leader, I think you need to put extra effort into them to show the way and say, look, you know, it is possible to change. It's hard, but it's possible. And here is why we need to do it because of X, Y, Z, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was thinking that maybe, you know, I need to bring back the panel that I have on the generation thing and say, hey, is there a customer X, a customer millennials, and a customer Z? Maybe they can help us with that. Wow, I can't believe it's been almost 40 minutes, 36 minutes that we've been talking. Time flies in good company. Before we get to some closure and closing comments here, I haven't myself, but I'm asking you, have you worked for a really customer-focused, customer-first organization in your career?

I think there's been elements of it. Uh, I, I think, you know, that it, it's not like I can say this organization was definitely, you know, super customer focused because I think it, it, you know, the bigger as an organization you are, there are pockets of it, you know? And, and I think, um, we got to know each other in ServiceSource where—

That's right.

You know, the engagement that I had Was completely different to my EMEA colleagues between ourselves and your company life, and and that to me is is also a good indication of you will have people that come into an organization in a given country territory whatever and start driving a change. But you can't change necessarily what other regions are doing or what the entire company is doing unless you are that. Chief customer office there if you were doing before.

Yeah, no, that's that's that's a good point. So I will leave you with some space to think about some closing comments. But based on what I heard with the things that kind of stick with stick with me here is you know you said hey when I hear hey the customer is wrong that's wrong customer oriented a customer focused organization. You said that very early in the show, is the customer is not wrong. He's just trying to explain or give a sentiment on something, that it's not the responsibility of the customer success organization or the sales organization or the customer-facing organization. It's a cross-company thing. It's that either you're a customer-focused company or you're not.

It's not—

there is no and. It's or. You are or you're not. That is a cultural thing.

Yeah.

It's not, yeah, processes are good and you reinforce some of the behavior that you want to see. But at the end of the day, it's a cultural thing and it starts at the top. If the CEO and the leadership team is not customer— is not truly customer-oriented, not pretending to be customer-oriented, but really customer-oriented, then it starts here because there's going to be a remodeling of the behavior downstream. I think we also said, and you also said, hey, but you can train people up. Yeah, it's something that you can learn. Yeah, there are some people that are much more oriented initially, but it's something that you can learn. It means different things for different culture, different generation. But, at the end of the day, everything you look into is about how do you serve customer. And again, I'm not saying, and I don't think that you're saying that, Peter, that, hey, this is the panacea and that this is the way that you should be doing or you're not going to be successful. No, it's like, if you pretend that you're customer-oriented, you better be a good one because it's not that easy. And unfortunately, a lot of people are saying, I'm customer-first. Of course, no company will come out and say, oh, I'm customer-first, right? That's not really marketing-wise a good positioning. But don't, please don't say that you're customer-first when you're not. Pierre couldn't find a name. I couldn't find a name. There is not a lot of companies out there that are truly deeply, fundamentally customer-oriented. That's a myth that everybody is customer-oriented. Before I say goodbye to everybody, Peter, anything that you want to leave the audience with? Something that— a word of wisdom from Singapore.

No, look, I think you covered it really well and it was great, this podcast. It put a lot of things in perspective, right? Uh, I think for both of us even, I, I think, you know, building a culture is very hard. It, it is.

It is.

You, you need to have a good foundation and then build it over time. Um, and, and it needs to be adapted to individual cultures, right? Because as we said before, what, what works in US might not necessarily work in, in Indonesia or, or, or, you know, Thailand. Um, but I think it, it needs to be throughout the entire organization. And one thing we unfortunately didn't have time to speak about is It's also about the people that you recruit.

That's right.

And it's the people and it's how you onboard them. Because if you are not from the get-go giving that sort of feeling to a new person that is onboarded, that customers are, are what pays the bills, right? And, and pays our salaries. You know, if, if, if that, if, if it doesn't start when you come in the door to a company, then it's gonna be hard to change down the line, right? And, and I think that's what many are missing, that, okay, we have this great culture and let's attract some great talent and so on. But the new guys, they really are the ones that, you know, will, will be there and stay there because they see that energy that comes from a customer-first mindset and an organizational culture that basically says, this is it, guys, let's drive. Yeah.

Uh, uh, in, in, in closing here, I want to take a nugget that Peter just gave me. Never forget. At the end of the day, the person who's paying the salaries, the person who's paying the bonuses, the person who's paying the share value increase, it's the customer. And it's the customer. The person who pays the bill is not the CFO. It's the customer that are ready to give you some of their wealth because you're giving them back more value. And without customers, no company exists. I have yet to find a company that exists without customers. That's a bit of an oxymoron. All right, Peter, it was super cool to not meet again, but to have a deep conversation. I'm sure we can go on and on and on and on about customers and customer orientation and customer-focused forever. It was great seeing you in that beautiful city, island, state, country. That's all what Singapore is all about. 40 kilometers wide, 20 kilometers long. Maybe it's bigger now because they keep reclaiming land. But, beautiful place, very special place in my heart where my son was born. I wish you well. I hope we stay connected. I'm sure we will. We've been connected for 15 years. Thank you so much for being with us. And to you and to the audience, I say goodbye. Bye.