Is Customer-centricity in your DNA?
Just as all the women in Lake Wobegon are good looking and all the children are above average, every company these days considers itself “customer-centric.”
But does “customer centricity” mean the same thing to customers as it does for marketers? Is it a set of initiatives you undertake to raise customer satisfaction scores? Is it a system of metrics that measure behaviors (complaints, repeat purchases, etc.)?
There are at least two problems with trying to impose customer-centric initiatives or measurement on your business. In the first place, customer-centricity is a company wide platform. Most every company is successful at being customer-centric in some ways. But then there are breakdowns in other areas. So measuring the performance of one aspect of customer-centricity does little to give you an idea of how well you’re doing organization-wide.
A second issue is that customer-centricity means different things to different people. For some, all you need to do is show up on time and offer a decent value. Others may define it as answering the customer service line with a live body. Or offering a generous return policy. Or following up with a service call after the sale. Trying to approach customer- centricity on a touchpoint-by-touchpoint basis is akin to playing a game of whack-a-mole.
What is it, then, that tends to separate truly customer-centric organizations from the rest of the businesses we deal with? Basically, they know their customers and anticipate their needs. Not necessarily what they want (or rather think they want), but more what they are trying to accomplish, and why they are buying the product or service in the first place.
In other words, these companies understand customer context. As the old adage goes, the customer is not buying a drill, he’s buying a hole. Understanding the context the customer operates in frees you to view your offerings from beyond their functional components.
One other characteristic truly customer-centric organizations have in common is that they are as genuinely interested in the transactional outcome as the customer is. And not necessarily in the “how-much-profit-was-in-this-sale” kind of way, but rather, “was the transaction rewarding to the customer?”
Customer satisfaction scores may give you an indication of how well you meet your customers’ expectations, but that kind of “satisfaction” is really no more than table stakes.
Customer-centricity, as seen by the customer, is about how the company conducts itself, how it “behaves” toward its customers, how those customers are treated, what its values are and how they feel as a result. The customer’s view of customer-centricity is much more about the experience of dealing with the firm than it is about even what that firm sells or the price it charges.
And as far as making a public declaration of one’s customer-centricity? That’s a dangerous ploy. You are setting yourself up for a fall — as soon as there is any sort of breakdown anywhere in your organization, the customer will view your proclamation of customer-centricity as nothing more than empty marketing pap.
True customer-centricity is not something you do, it is something you are.
On a personal note, because of the upcoming holidays and some personal time off, this will likely be the last Quisenblog post for the year. We will return in 2009 bigger and badder than ever. Happy Holidays to all!
Posted by Mickey
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