The centre of attention

Is your business customer centric?

Course it is. Your Chief Executive tells you it is and your marketing people will tell you that it is their role to make the business customer centric. How do I know this? Just a hunch and years of cynicism.

But have you ever stopped and thought what exactly it means to be customer centric. I only ask because I heard someone very senior in a very large business say this recently and I asked him what he meant and what he was doing. The panic on his face and the bluster in his voice revealed so much. So what exactly is customer centricity? And how do we know when we are customer centric?

When Columbus set out for America he did not know where he was going. When he got there he did not know where he was. And when he got back he did not know where he had been. Is the same true for customer centricity?

Anyway back to the meaning of customer centricity.

For some it’s about making products and services that customers want to buy based on meeting a real need. Sorry but that’s what marketing is all about. Surely customer centricity means more than that.

For some businesses, customer centricity is about leadership and culture where staff are motivated to go the extra mile for customers. So now we have two definitions.

For others it’s about data and they would argue that by gathering as much data as you can about and from your customers and then employing people with brains the size of planet to analyse this to the precision and depth of circumcising gnats, they can develop offers driven by this data. Others will re-design processes so that these fit around the customer rather than making the customer fit around their processes.

And as the Irish comedian said, come here, there’s more.

Yet another school will define customer centricity in terms of customisation and personalisation. Every customer is different so we need to organise products, services and communications to fit individual preferences and priorities.

So what is it? Is it about products or culture or process design or data or customisation? Now do you see the problem? Might I suggest you ask in your business and see how many definitions you get?

Now you could answer that maybe it’s the whole lot. And you might be right but no business could face in so many directions at once. Where is the priority? Where is the focus? And if there is no clarity around which everyone in your business can agree and if the same words are being used but to mean different things, well that is just a recipe for chaos.

Maybe there is no standard definition of customer centricity; maybe as a phrase it’s too glib. Maybe the flavour of customer centricity your business chooses is dependent on the business model, the market category, the strengths and capabilities of your business.

Maybe as someone far more eloquent than even I once so succinctly put it, it's time to ‘stop doing dumb things to our customers’. Maybe it is that simple. Maybe true customer centricity comes from a top to bottom focus on fixing things that drive customers away. I like that. It’s simple. It’s clear. It’s directive.

How do you define customer-centricty? And do you work in a customer centric business?