Death Of Customer Centricity Greatly Exaggerated

Is customer centricity dead?

So suggests CustomerThink CEO Bob Thompson in his recent blog post, “Customer-Centricity is Dead! What’s Next?” To be fair, Thompson doesn’t say that the concept is lifeless or being actively firebombed by businesses, but he does suggest that its time has passed.

What’s customer centricity, you ask? While definitions vary, in general customer centricity means focusing on customer satisfaction, and always asking: Do our products or services meet, surpass, or fail to meet our customers’ expectations?

Why bother? Because many businesses find that customer satisfaction correlates directly with revenues. Happier customers equal a better balance sheet.

Back to the question–Is customer centricity dead?–to which my reply is simple: This isn’t a useful discussion. While announcing the death of customer centricity may be good for shifting books or research reports, from a practitioner’s standpoint, it won’t make your CRM implementation any better.

Lessons From Panasonic’s CRM Program

Take Panasonic. When one of the world’s largest electronic product manufacturers needed to merge three different business-to-business (B2B) divisions–handling 12 different business to business product lines, such as projectors and professional cameras–into a single division with a combined revenue of $1.3 billion, did it begin the project by saying, “Let us first acknowledge that customer centricity is dead”?

Of course not. Instead, Panasonic first identified consolidated customer views and better sales forecasting as one of its primary project goals, not least to help to company reduce costs by maintaining a near-zero inventory. Working with Innoveer, the Panasonic division then implemented salesforce.com in just nine months, both on time, and on budget.

Forget Abstract Discussions: Pick A Business Strategy

Likewise, when Vertex Pharmaceuticals needed to rapidly bring a new drug to market and make hay while the sun was shining, did it begin debating abstract concepts of customer centricity? Not at all. Instead, the company picked a strategy based on its business objectives, which by the way also touched on ensuring that customers remain very satisfied with its products.

Same again for a leading U.S. consumer goods manufacturer that produces baby formula, which is regulated by the country’s Food and Drug Administration. For this business, staying customer-centric is essential, given that the company must sometimes field calls from concerned customers whose babies may be having an allergic reaction to the formula. Accordingly, the business has put FDA-approved scripts in place to ensure that its call center agents accurately triage calls and provide the best possible guidance. Given that the company must sometimes help resolve potential life-and-death-situations, it would be tough to argue that it shouldn’t stay customer-centric.

Begin With Business Outcomes

As the above success stories demonstrate, the best way to begin any CRM-related endeavor is to step back and see the big business picture. Don’t talk technology, at least not from the start, and forget the aforementioned abstract conceptual discussions. Instead, focus on the concrete business outcomes you’re seeking, and then develop a rapid-action plan to identify the best way to achieve those goals.

When it comes to identifying business goals, we’ve found that to be successful, every CRM project must target one or more of the following measurable outcomes:

• improving organizational efficiency
• increasing revenue growth
• bolstering customer satisfaction.

For many businesses, in other words, ensuring that your customers remain satisfied–through your marketing, sales, and service outreach, and increasingly through social channels–is anything but an abstract discussion.

Learn More

For more proof of the importance of ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction, see our case study with Innoveer customer Draker, a solar panel monitoring and metering control company. And given that Apple boasts some of the highest customer satisfaction scores in the market, take a page from our Apple Genius Bar CRM lessons to improve both your business’s customer satisfaction levels as well as sales results.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Kevin Dooley.

One More Thing

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