Culture trickles. Always.

Every company loves to say they are customer obsessed. But obsession ends at being a line. And it usually ends there. True customer obsession is culture. And culture does not start at the front-lines. It starts at the top.

And no, this does not apply only to customer experience teams.

Here is some translation for you:

Leadership says "Push harder"

Team hears "Say yes even if you don’t know how"

Customer hears "We will get back to you" for the fifth time.

Leadership says “Let’s be efficient with our spends”

Team hears "Close the ticket fast. Don’t solve it"

Customer leaves, never to return.

Leadership says “NPS is crucial”

Team hears “High NPS at all cost”

Only happy customers receive NPS surveys.

Top down culture breeds compliance, not care.

Teams stop thinking. They wait for instructions.

Frontlines freeze in real situations because nobody empowered them to act.

Then a customer crisis hits.

And leadership wonders: Why is the team not owning the problem? Why is the customer angry? Why is the experience broken?

You can hide bad culture internally for years.

With individual brilliance. With heroes carrying the business alone. With a few people doing the job of ten.

But when those heroes leave.

The cracks become craters.

And the customer falls straight through.

Great culture is not what leaders preach.

It is what happens when leaders are not in the room.

When culture fails, customers feel the pain.