By: Suresh Rajapakse, Chief Client Officer at Wheels – Driving Client Experience, Innovation & Results.
Every company likes to believe it puts clients first. But there’s often a wide gap between intention and reality. The reality is, to be client-first is to live and breathe the goals that matter most to your client, embedding them as your primary area of focus and making decisions that support client outcomes and objectives.
That gap can be challenging to overcome in one area or region, but what happens when companies scale across multiple countries, time zones and continents? The stakes get even higher, and the question becomes, “How do you stay client-first in a global world?”
True client-first leadership means understanding what clients perceive as valuable, both on a global and local scale, and leveraging your relationships, expertise and technology to prove that worth.
Balancing Universal Operations With Cultural Intelligence
The most important thing to consider with global customer relations is that, at their core, client needs tend to be universal—being heard, receiving follow-through, building partnerships and experiencing quality service. Where differences arise most often is in communication styles and expectations, which vary by culture and region.
Relationships matter. No matter the market or region, focus on building trust and nurturing connections. If you’re looking to improve your client relationships, global or local, consider:
• Ensuring consistency through structured relationship management at both local and global levels.
• Maintaining regular communication across global locations through quarterly checkpoints to ensure alignment and prevent divergence from corporate objectives.
• Developing client advisory boards across markets to ensure thinking occurs at country, regional and global levels, which informs product development and service offerings.
To help maintain global consistency, identify three to four top themes and priorities, such as cost reduction, sustainability or safety, for everyone to focus on. At regional and local levels, it’s then broken down into more relevant, actionable items for teams to execute on while ensuring both global and local alignment.
Ultimately, no matter your tactics, the goal should be to find a balance addressing local needs while maintaining focus on overall corporate objectives, preventing teams from diverting in multiple different directions.
Technology As The Great Equalizer
Technology has had a vast impact on global business in the past five years alone. Virtual collaboration and communication tools can eliminate the need for international travel for global meetings, allowing participants from multiple countries to operate fluidly and effectively while saving significant costs.
For fleet management specifically, we’ve seen how advancements like connected vehicle technology enable a more consistent global reporting infrastructure, allowing companies to analyze fleet data across regions in a more standardized way.
And, of course, the hot topic of the past few years: AI. Machine learning and AI implementation are improving data mining efficiency, reducing manual analysis time and enabling quicker insights delivery to clients through generative AI capabilities, across sectors and markets. For example, at Wheels, we have been using machine learning across a range of processes for years. More recently, we are leveraging AI in our internal operations to support our employees’ productivity and also by embedding it across our client and driver tools to simplify tasks and deliver information in a clear, easily consumable way.
The trick is to use AI as an opportunity to optimize talent and operations, not as a replacement. With this mindset, organizations can leverage AI’s capabilities to tackle time-consuming, routine tasks like data analysis and reporting, allowing them to focus on more human-driven activities like communication, relationship building and strategy.
Implementing Global Client Strategy At Scale
As markets become increasingly interconnected, the companies that will dominate are those that maintain a client-first approach, regardless of their size. They’re the ones that understand that client needs are universal, but delivery methods are cultural.
The question for every global organization is no longer whether to prioritize clients, but rather: Do you have the operational mindset and empathy to be client-first at scale across markets?
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