As the “Big Kahuna” in your organization, you are responsible for many things…the buck always stops at the top. Not just the Vision and Mission…but something more important…your Values and your Culture. These are the two primary components your CUSTOMERS see, feel, and experience every single day.
If you’re the Owner or CEO or your business and you don’t have a CUSTOMER CENTRIC STRATEGY in place within the next few years, the largest consulting and research firms in the world believe you will either be gone or irrelevant in the market. Strong words…backed by lots of research.
Customer Centricity (or Customer Obsession as I call it) is about LEADERSHIP.
Customer Centricity/Obsession doesn’t’ have to be some complicated definition or explanation. Allow me to share a very simple definition of Customer Centricity/Obsession…it will help you see why this is so critical to your business. Customer Centricity simply means “the Customer is always the first person we focus on when making decisions about every process and action we take inside our company.”
For example, it means asking the following question anytime a decision point comes up for anyone in a leadership role in your company, “How will this decision impact our customer and will this decision improve or detract from the experience we want to deliver to them?” Here are your three possible choices…only three…
- If it is really positive and they will love it, that’s a good decision…let’s go that direction
- If it’s neutral, then we figure out a way to make it much more positive…then we go that direction
- If it’s negative, we scrap it and start over thinking about why it wasn’t positive and how we can make it positive.
This makes decision making much simpler for managers and leaders. This is what a company that is “all about” the customer and Customer Centric or Customer Obsessed looks like.
Why would you want to make this your LEADERSHIP MANTRA?
Here’s an easy roleplay example. As the CEO, do a “role reversal” for a minute. You are now a customer of your company. Think about EVERY INTERACTION you will have with your company…from the first phone call, visiting your website, listening to your social media channels, reviews, walking in the building, meeting the first person, talking to the sales team, taking delivery, using the products/services, post-sale follow-up, ongoing support, additional purchases, and other interactions your customer has with you…there are, on average, about 25 of these in most organizations at any point in time.
Think about these interactions and ask yourself one simple question, “How did I feel after that interaction with my own company…did it make me say “WOW, this was awesome” or did I say, “That was pretty good,” or did I say, “That was awful.”” You can add them up if you want, but intuitively, you will know how most of the interactions with your company made you feel.
Customer Centric companies ONLY shoot for WOW…they only focus on making their customers feel special and giving them an experience they absolutely love…and want to share. If you didn’t feel this way in your role reversal exercise for your company, neither will your customers.
THE ONLY DIFFERENTIATOR TODAY AND INTO THE FUTURE, THAT IS COMPLETELY CONTROLLED AND OWNED BY YOU, IS THE EXPERIENCE YOU GIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS…everything else is essentially a commodity and someone is thinking how to copy it, perfect it, and make it cheaper than yours…as you read this post.
CUSTOMER CENTRICITY IS ABOUT CONTROL…not of your customers but of your future and your company. It moves you from being a sitting duck in the commodity world and puts your company on higher and safer ground so you can control your future. Let me repeat this since it is so critical for you, the CEO, to hear…Customer Centricity is the strategy that puts you in complete control of your future…unlike anything else you can do.
Unfortunately, more often than not, I see CEOs fooling themselves and trying to convince their employees and customers they are customer centric when they are far from it. Phrases like, “We really care about our customers” or “Our customers are the most important thing to us” or “We love our customers” are all rhetoric…unless the strategy of the company is Customer Centricity/Obsession. It’s lip service to your audience of employees and customers (and they know it) unless you can demonstrate through your processes and actions that every decision you make as the CEO is answering this question, “How is this going to make our customers life better than it was before they interacted with us?” If you know the answer to this question with every decision you make as the Big Kahuna…you are Customer Centric. If not…you might want to reconsider the path you are on…for your customers and employees.
One last thought to consider. CUSTOMER CENTRICITY = TRUST.
When everything you do and decide upon has the customer squarely in the center you build an incredible amount of TRUST. This is worth more than anything else in the market today. Trust gives you a bigger share of the customer wallet, more word-of-mouth, and massive loyalty. There is a reason many call the new revolution we are in today THE TRUST ECONOMY. Companies who have earned the trust of their customers will be the winners. People are making more decisions today based on trust than ever before.
CUSTOMER CENTRICITY IS NOT JUST FOR THE FUTURE…it is the opportunity today to differentiate your brand and set yourself apart from your competitors…while allowing you to be in complete control. Nothing else even comes close to giving a CEO or Business Owner these benefits today. And because so few companies operate this way today, if you seize the opportunity you can be the recognized leader in your industry. Within the next 3 years, this won’t be the case…others will have figured this out.
I am so passionate about seeing every company achieve this enviable position that if you truly want to know more about what this is, why it is so critical, and how to start the journey…buy me lunch and I’ll blow your mind. This may just be the most fun you have ever had leading a company!!
