Top Ten Reasons for Being Customer-Centric

The Age of Personalization is centered on the empowerment of the customer, and the drive for companies to deliver the customized products and services they demand, leveraging technology, communities, and operational processes. Being other-centric is an essential and fundamental trait for leaders at all levels as we all aspire to deliver what-the-customer-wants, the most necessary requirement for today’s successful companies and leaders.

Strategic Impact – Focusing on the needs of the customer will impact the overall direction of the organization.

1. Making a choice for what-customers-want will transform everything about the company, in a good way: from the way it communicates to the products and services they provide, from who they partner with to whom they serve.

2. Pivoting in this direction may be a small shift for some companies, and quite a large change for others. It is essential for companies that plan on taking a leadership role in an age of personalization.

3. Having the leadership team buy into this customer-centric model is as essential as ensuring that it flows throughout the organization.

Communication Impact – Communicating the customer focus will help facilitate richer, deeper and broader networks and communities.

4. Communicating a customer-centric direction will impact how others outside the company see you, from customers to partners to channels, and also impact how people within the company view the company for whom they work.

5. The brand and message about the company has so much more potential if the foundational philosophy is focused on the customer.

6. If the fundamental precept of a company is around the customer, it will be easier to shift communication messages and corporate direction, should there be a need for a strategic shift, led by the needs-of-the-customer/market.

Technology Impact – Consciously choosing other-centric thinking and leadership will help the company and teams deliver technology-based solutions to serve the needs of individual and niche customers.

7. Having a customer-centric focus will help internal teams deliver solutions tailored to the needs of the customer, defining excellence based on standards they set. The company mind set would be more about delivering what-the-customer-wants rather than developing a technology-that-anybody-would-want.

8. Developing technology-based solutions focused on the current and anticipated needs of the customer, in partnership with the customer will help create a clear picture of success, deliver to same, and continually adjust same.

Community Impact – Creating communities of customers will help companies hear the voice and understand the needs of their niche and individual customers and empower them to actively participate in the evolution of products and services and partnerships.

9. The more a company shows that it is customer-centric, the larger the customer community it will have, and the more engaged that community will become.

10. Facilitating a deep and broad partnership with communities of empowered customers will lead to greater and deeper relationships between a company and those it serves, which would directly and indirectly correlate to bottom line results.

In summary, active participation of empowered communities of customers will be the hallmark of success in the new way-of-doing-business.