Rosenverse
Building a Customer-Centric Culture

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Building a Customer-Centric Culture

Gold
Monday, March 30, 2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Share the love for this talk
Building a Customer-Centric Culture
Speakers: Crystal Yan
Link:

Summary

When you’re building, not optimizing, you need everyone to learn from customers. But how do you build a team culture in which everyone, including backend engineers and compliance program managers, does research? I’ll share what I’ve learned so far on creative methods for how to coach, how to share insights, and how to impact company policies. You’ll walk away with a new approach to teaching non-researchers how to research, sharing insights from customers that get heard and impact decisions, and finally, ideas for selling your organization on policies that enable a more customer-centric culture.

Key Insights

  • Democratizing research means offering transparency, real insights, and permission for everyone to care about customer understanding.

  • Breaking down research training into micro-lessons embedded in existing team rituals boosts comfort and engagement.

  • Coaching teams to listen deeply to customer quotes together reveals underlying customer emotions like distrust.

  • Research office hours alone often fail to engage non-experts due to fears of doing research 'wrong'.

  • Assigning small 'quests' that let team members experience customer contexts directly is an effective entry point into research.

  • Sharing customer insights in multiple formats and cadences (like daily field postcards or Slack snippets) increases team curiosity.

  • Involving peers in feedback on insight-sharing initiatives creates allies who also share customer learnings.

  • Leadership support, including public recognition and explicit permission for research engagement, is vital to embed a customer-centric culture.

  • Customer-centricity should be integrated into hiring, performance reviews, and company values, not treated as a side task.

  • Real-world programs like ‘quest’ assignments and experiential scholarships help employees deeply understand customer challenges.

Notable Quotes

"Everyone needs permission from their manager and leaders to truly care about research outside of their job description."

"When you share a customer quote, the first layer is literal, but the goal is to dig deeper into what the customer is truly feeling."

"Research office hours sound good, but many people feel nervous or don’t know if they’re ready to participate."

"Embedding micro-lessons into team rituals sets an ongoing expectation that customer learning never ends."

"Sending team members on quests, like visiting a bank branch to understand immigrant experiences, makes research approachable."

"Sharing a quick customer insight story right after research sparks curiosity and invites more questions."

"A Slack bot that sends random customer quotes encourages ongoing learning and discovery."

"Leadership public recognition of time spent engaging with research is a powerful way to give people permission to participate."

"Customer centricity must be part of hiring, performance reviews, and budgeting for it to truly stick."

"Find an ally leader who can publicly encourage your team to take part in research initiatives and then support them."

Ask the Rosenbot
Jemma Ahmed
Theme Three Intro
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Eniola Oluwole
Lessons From the DesignOps Journey of the World's Largest Travel Site
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Lavy Kumar
Future of Work
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Michelle Morrison
Practice What You Preach
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
George Aye
That Quiet Little Voice: When Design and Ethics Collide
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Kristin Skinner
Theme 2: Introduction and Provocation
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Sarah Fathallah
Beyond insights: Rethinking the role of researchers as stewards of organizational wisdom
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Theresa Neil
Designing for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Ned Dwyer
The Intersection of Design and ResearchOps
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Anupama Dhareshwar
From blueprint to bot: Designing resilient AI-powered services
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Mark Templeton
Creating a Legacy: the ultimate experience
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Jose Coronado
From Zero to Hero
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Uday Gajendar
The Wicked Craft of Enterprise UX
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Brenna Fallon
Learning Over Outcomes
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Dean Broadley
Not Black Enough to be White
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Jeff Sussna
What DesignOps Can Learn From DevOps
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold

More Videos

Alexandra Schmidt

"Users have no choice but to use the software we build, so adoption metrics are often not useful."

Alexandra Schmidt

Enterprise UX Playbook

December 1, 2022

Jen Crim

"We have maintained that freshness and acceptance of new ideas while growing rapidly."

Jen Crim Jess Quittner Saritha Kattekola Alex Karr Gurbani Pahwa

Culture, DIBS & Recruiting

June 11, 2021

Christian Crumlish

"If you want to improve the product team’s understanding, frame UX value in terms of their language and goals, not just UX jargon."

Christian Crumlish

AMA with Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People

March 24, 2022

Libby Maurer

"If diversity is being asked to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is actually dancing with everyone else."

Libby Maurer

Treating Diversity & Inclusion in Hiring as a Design Problem

December 5, 2019

Ali Jeffery

"Sustainability is not just about the environment, it’s about community."

Ali Jeffery Sheri Chudow

How DesignOps Helped Enable Wall Street to Work Remotely

October 22, 2020

Daniel Gloyd

"Meisner taught actors to respond truthfully in the moment, prioritizing presence over preconceived ideas."

Daniel Gloyd

Designing From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research

February 12, 2026

Kristin Skinner

"Personalization is not just a trend; it’s a necessity."

Kristin Skinner

Five Years of DesignOps

September 29, 2021

Johanna Kollmann

"The service wasn’t achieving the impact it was set out to have because the regulations governing everything else were not fit for purpose."

Johanna Kollmann

Insights-Driven Product Strategy: Get your Research to Count

December 6, 2022

David Sternberg

"With QFI, we go upstream: simulate, model, predict user behavior before shipping, not just react after."

David Sternberg

Uncovering the hidden forces shaping user behavior

July 17, 2025