But few companies have started the journey in earnest, and fewer still can claim proficiency.
After all, customer-centricity sounds right, it feels right, it even does right (higher financial returns). Why then the lag in evolution?
1) insufficient appreciation of a significant other,
2) the inability to visualize an alternate reality, and
3) the lack of will,
provide a non-traditional explanation why the signal to noise ratio for customer-centricity is so low.
Type in the words "customer centric" in Google, and the first thing you find is customer-centric selling. Not customer-centric innovation, not customer-centric product development, not customer-centric strategy. Just selling.
The bare truth is that for most companies, the customer is a mere invisible means to an ever-increasing end; sales, market share, and profits. And the end is invariably more valuable than the means.
Jack Nicklaus reportedly never played a golf shot without first visualizing it in his mind's eye. Research conducted by brain scientists and cognitive psychologists affirms that the ability to visualize positive outcomes increases the probability of those needs becoming reality
But what if the company can't visualize what it really means to be customer-centric? After all they can see tangibles like products, sales, and revenue charts on a daily basis. And while it may not be ideal or optimum, it is real!
What if this alternate reality is really more hype than substance, what then? And since most companies can never quite answer this question satisfactorily, the alternate reality stays locked and companies stay home, foregoing the customer-centric journey, despite its promise of greater prosperity and riches.
Do companies have the will to put in the hard yards that living a customer-centric life demands?
By all accounts customer-centricity is hard to build and sustain in large organizations. It requires a significant investment in people, training, resources, realignment of structure and processes, and breaking down information and power silos, to name just a few. This is hard work and could test the will of even the most determined CEO.
A few years ago I was in Athens, attending a global managers meeting for a large agency. On the last day a great ritual was staged. In the old Greek tradition we threw plates in the air (they were paper plates, throwing real china plates is banned), to symbolize a break from the past. We committed ourselves to our customers, to innovation, and went home. On returning home nothing changed, everything stayed exactly the way it was.
Most companies want to win at customer-centricity. They want the customer to love them more than their competitors. But rarely do they have the will to do whatever it takes to earn the customer's love. Up to a point, and no more.
We don't need more analysis to understand why there is such a huge chasm between what
companies claim by way of customer-centricity and how they actually conduct
their businesses.
All that we need
is to acknowledge a cold and brutal fact:
customers are not # 1!
And as the
good bard said - "...ay, there's the rub"
Great post! I'm just learning to "trust the tribe" through social media. From my point of view, as well as that of my Clients, the issue is one of control. In traditional "push/interruption" marketing, we were in total control of the output (or at least, that's what we thought...). We controlled the message and the media. We controlled the timing, frequency and intensity. Then we measured our results and adjusted the mix to try to improve the outcomes. Then we SOLD, SOLD, SOLD! Features, Advantages, BENEFITS! Again, we controlled the message and delivery.
How did today’s managers rise to the top? Through exercising control over people, resources and processes to achieve results. Control has been learned and consistently reinforced. It’s internalized and “known.” In fact, don’t we demean someone who’s “out of control”?
Now, it seems to me, the "new" social/community architecture reverses the locus of control. The implications are clear: You (your brand, your offer) has to be relevant and meaningful to somebody. You have to matter in some way to someone. If you don't, you'll be ignored. If you try to push your message through, you'll be ignored.
In other words, you have to give up control to the tribe (thanks to Seth Godin for the metaphor). Today it’s necessary to be proactively reactive.
To be relevant and meaningful, it's critical to understand in detail and depth your intended user, their life, and the "job" they're trying to do (i.e., be customer-centric). There's an excellent (if somewhat dated now) article "Get Inside the Lives of Your Customers" by Patricia Seybold at Harvard Business Review (I found it on Amazon) that helps describe this process.
It's a new (marketing) world today — one where the community has control and the supplier has to work very hard to tune in and satisfy Customer needs, wants and demands. It’s marketing’s version of the old Trust exercise: “fall back into your partner’s arms — they’ll catch you…” No more "push" — hello "pull."
//Richard Randolph
Florida Customer Service Institute
Great Post.Customers are the top line they are the bottom line.
Now is the era of Customer co-creation and Customer collaboration.Era of Sales 2.0.
Warm Regards
How do you feel about companies like Best Buy, who have recently launched a "customer centric" program that categorizes their customers into Jills, Rays, Barry's, etc. Entire stores are designed around these customers, and associates are trained to work with them. Do you think this marketing approach satisfies true customer centricity?
FYI, I do not work for Best Buy.
Thanks for your comment Christopher. The Jill, Ray, Barry approach is definitely in the right direction. But I presume by true customer centricity you mean - an extreme position, not somewhere in between. If Best Buy, is tracking and keeping in touch with the same Jill, Ray, and Barry (same, this is very important), in time periods t, t+1, t+2, etc., and adjusting its offerings and selling approaches around the uniquely changing needs of these individuals, then yes they would be truly customer centric.