Customer-Centricity

"There are ducks, and there are eagles.

The ducks run around the ground
quacking all the time, stating rules,
following orders, doing what they are
told and often pecking at other ducks.
Eagles soar high above to get the
best perspective and decide what is
best for the customer."
- Ken Blanchard (Leading at a
Higher Level)

A company's primary responsibility is

to serve its customers . . . Profit is
not the primary goal, but rather an
essential condition for the company's
continued existence.
- Peter Drucker

The alignment of systems, processes

and people to deliver products and
services to internal and external
customer in the most agile way.
- Charteris

What is CustomerCentricity?
Customer-centricity involves
aligning organizational resources
for effectively responding to the
ever-changing needs of
customers, while building
mutually profitable relationships.
- Craig Bailey & Kurt Jensen

Aligning Organizational
Resources

Personnel
Operating practices and procedures
Systems (internal and external)
Products and services

Aligning Personnel

Recognizing and rewarding

customer-centric behaviour.
Training every staff on customercentricity.
Ensuring that decision-making hinges
on customers.
Using communication tools and
techniques for highlighting the firms
progress in customer-centricity

Entrenching Customer-Centricity
via Training cum Internalization
Customer-centricity can be
embedded on organizational
processes through adequate
training and modeling of
interdepartmental transactions as
depiction of customer relationships
that require optimization.

Focus of Training

Communicating effectively and

building rapport.
Identifying and exploiting
opportunities.
Managing complex and taxing
conversations.
People and communication styles

Requirements for Building Mutually

Profitable Relationships
Ascertainment of customers request
Ensuring Profitability
Find out repeatability of transaction
Determination of feasible term of
relationship.

Voice of The Customer

Process

Obtain customers pulse

Involve the customer
Analyze information
Socialize results
Implement customer-focused
changes
Respond to the Customer

How to Obtain Customers

Pulse
Survey the Customer
Interview the Customer
Get information from customerfacing personnel
Observe actions and behaviours
of customers
Embark on mystery shopping

Three Different Faces of a Customer

Business decision-maker
End-user of product or service
Procurement function

Customer Survey

Transactional Surveys
Focuses on measuring
customer satisfaction with
individual or collection of
Interaction with firm.

Relationship Surveys
Focuses on all aspects
of the firm such as
Marketing
Product Management
Service and Support
Sales/Account Management
Engineering/Development
Professional Services
Training and Education
Accounting/Finance
Survey on many individuals in
customers firm.

Factors that Aid Collection of

Inputs from Customer-Facing
Personnel

Environment of trust
Establishing expectations with
personnel
Managing anecdotes

Involving Customers
This can be done by means of the following:
1. Focus Group: For obtaining information
through discussion with a group of
participants, taking cognizance of
commonality in demographics, attitudes or
purchase patterns.
2. Customer Board of Advisors: For holding
periodic meetings with selected number of
senior executives from firms customer
database. Factors that determine selection of
customers include strategic importance, level
of complexity/sophistication in use of
products or service, diversity of industries
which the firm represents.

Analyzing information
Analyze customer
feedback and information
obtained
Output:
i. Positive trends
ii. Challenging trends
iii. Issues raised by customers

Compare to other
information held by the
firm
Such information include the
following:
i. Customer demographics
ii. Transactional history

This gives rise to development of customer segmentation strategy

Socialize Result

Top-level reporting
for general
awareness

Comprehensive
report for
sectional,
departmental and
project
action-planning

Steps for Implementing Customer-Focused

Changes

Getting management commitment

Conducting cross-functional reviews
Voice of customer tracking and reviews
Forecasting

Key Performance Indicators

Targeted for Improvement

Customer Satisfaction
Customer Retention
Churn
Revenue and Profitability
-Overall
-By Customer Segment
-By Customer
Product/Service Diversity By
Customer

Responding to Customers
1. Immediate Response
i.
Establishment of criteria for immediacy.
ii.
Implementing immediacy team.
iii.
Management reporting.
2. Responding with Account Strategies
The six steps for implementing Account Strategies:
i.
Record account-specific results
ii.
Involve senior management in customer
experience.
iii.
Prepare for customer review meeting
iv.
Engage customer in meeting
v.
Inform the organization and respond
resourcefully.
vi.
Continue the process

Other Methods of Updating Customers

Newsletter
E-mail
Website
E-zine
Instituting the update as a component of firms
account management practices
Using interactive sessions of forum or board of
advisors.
Responding immediately to participants during
survey.

Common Pitfalls of CRM

Accepted as a technical instead of business
problem
Using a top-down approach
Non-involvement of senior management
Lack of focus on areas of high adoption
Driven by IT department instead of Sales,
Marketing and Service.
Biting more than one can chew
Organizational unpreparedness

From Product-Focused to Customer Centric Firm

Feature

Product-Focused

Customer-Centric

Customer Orientation

Discrete transaction at a point in time

Event-oriented marketing
Narrow Focus

Customer life-cycle orientation

Work with customer to solve both immediate and
long term issues
Build customer understanding at each interaction

Solution Mindset

Narrow distribution of customer value

proposition
Off-the-shelf products
Top-down design

Broad definition of customer value proposition

Bundles that combines products, services and
knowledge
Bottom-up, designed on the front lines

Advice Orientation

Perceived as outsider selling in

Push product
Transactional relationship
Individual to individual

Working as an insider
Solutions focus
Advisory relationship
Team-based selling

Customer Interface

Centrally driven
Limited decision-making power in field
Incentives based on product economics and
individual performance

Innovation and authority at the front line with

customer
Incentives based on customer economics and
team performance

Business Processes

One size fits all processes

Customization adds complexity

Tailored business streams

Balance between customization and complexity
Complexity isolated within the system

Organizational Linkages
& Metrics

Rigid organizational boundaries

Organizational silos control resources
Limited trust across organizational
boundaries

Cross-organizational teaming
Joint credit
High degree of organizational trust

Source: Booz Allen Hamilton

Solutions Advance Customer Value Proposition

Industry

Traditional
Value
Proposition

Value-Added
Services

Customer-Centric
Value Proposition

Traditional
Product

Truck
Manufacturing

Trucks

We sell and service

trucks

Financing
Service

We can help you reduce

life-cycle transportation
costs

Aerospace
Components

Aerospace
Fasteners

We sell highperformance fasteners

Application/Design
support

We can reduce your

operational costs

Utilities

Electricity

We provide electricity
reliability

Energy asset
maintenance

We can help you reduce

total energy costs

Chemicals

Lubricants

We sell a wide range of

lubricants

Usage and
application design
Lubricant analysis

We can increase your

machine performance and
up-time

Pharmaceuticals

Drugs

We sell pharmaceuticals

Product support
Outcomes-driven
information database

We can help you better

manage your patient base

Source: Booz Allen Hamilton

Developing Customer-Centric Culture

Put employees in the customers
shoes
Put employees in the shoes of a
particular colleague
Review your habits and attitude
Be evaluated in a 360-degree
approach by colleagues you
frequently deal with (through a
random selection.

Being a customer centric company

cant feel contrived; it has to feel
normal. It requires a concerted effort
by the entire company: All of its
activities and all of its results must
be focused on the customers explicit
and implicit goals.
- Jonathan Narducci

In todays commercial environment, the customer

relationship cannot be commodified. Companies
must continuously renew their commitmentand
strengthen their capabilitiesfor knowing and
reaching the customer, and delivering an
experience tailored to the needs, values and
preference of target segments. Engaging
purposefully with the multi-polar world by
mastering these core principles of customer
centricityknow, reach and delivershould be a
key element of a consumer enterprises current
response to the downturn, and a key element in
part positioning the business for long-term
benefit.
- Accenture, Customer-Centricity Principles for Acquiring Customers in Todays Multipolar World

Customer-Centricity as a culture must

integrate both cognizance and
ratification of internal and external
customers in order to synchronize
workable behavioural acceptation in
every facet of a firms interaction
sphere.

Customer - centricity needs to come

from the inside
out.Leadership must avoid a
double standard that makes it OK for
managers to argue with or demean
staff while still being courteous and
considerate to external customers.
- Elaine Berke

What is Customer Advocacy?

Its a cross-functional role
empowered to marshal
organizational resources to resolve
troublesome customer issues and
identify root cause while balancing
the financial realities and strategic
goals of the company.

The Need for Customer Advocacy

Function
To steer customers away from
veiled gaps, inefficiencies and
organizational complexities
that perturb perception,
thereby managing customer
experience effectively.

Key Skills for Customer Advocates

Straight-forward and honest
Interpersonal management and
communication
Good business sense and judgment
Organizational navigation
Executive Presence
Time management
Project management

Customer Advocacy Process

Framework
Customer segmentation
Engagement process
Escalation process
Response planning, analysis and
execution
Managing customer experience through
resolution
Internal management review

Factors to Consider When Crafting Message

Ensure your communication stands
alone
Consider the audience
Read it as if you were the recipient
Acknowledge the bigger picture
Special handling procedures when
emotionally charged

Dos of Customer Centricity

Donts of Customer Centricity

1. Adjust your mission and vision statement

Expect a brand new mission statement to make

you a customer-centric company

2. Segment your customer base

Overcomplicate the segmentation

3. Align your organization structure with the

segmented customer view

Reorganize too often and for the sake of it

4. Make good use of technology

Expect technology to build customer

relationships for you

5. Create new performance measures

Throw out the old performance measures

6. Study the behaviours, attitudes and

demographics of your customers

Confuse behaviours and attitudes with needs

7. Try to understand the true value of your

customers

Rely on the customers past buying patterns

8. Empower employees, particularly customerfacing staff for proactive relationship-building

Allow anyone in the company to say (or think)

this is not my job/responsibility

9. Set clear goals for achieving a defined state

of customer centricity by a certain point in time

Assume that your project/ programme were

completed, you got there

10. Encourage and seek to create customer

loyalty

Think of loyalty as the tenure of a customer

(duration of the relationship)

11. Communicate and engage all stakeholders

in the process

Limit your change management efforts to the

marketing, sales and customer service functions

The Seven Characteristics of Customer-Centric Companies

i.
ii.
iii.

iv.
v.
vi.
vii.

They conceive of themselves not as a group of products, services, territories, or

functions, but as a portfolio of customers.
They know how much money they make or lose with each of their customers or
customer segments, and they understand why.
They understand the different needs of different customers and group them into
operational customer segments and sub-segments based on common needs.
They thrill their customers by delivering knockout value propositions that
competitors cannot match.
They continually innovate by evolving their customer segments and subsegments, and improve their value propositions as customer needs change.
They organize their businesses into customer segment business units to
establish clear ownership of the customer experience and accountability for the
financial performance of each customer business unit.
They create a competitively unassailable customer innovation advantage based
on a customer R&D model grounded in continual experimentation at key
customer touch points.
They understand in precise analytic terms exactly how their different customer
relationships contribute to or subtract from the total value of the firm; because
they manage their customer portfolio on this basis, they know what to manage
and where to invest in order to create sustainable, profitable growth and drive
outstanding share price performance over time.
Source: Wharton Business School

Managers like profits just as much as

shareholders do, because the more profits the
firm makes, the more money is available to
pay managers. In other words, the need for a
healthy share price is a natural constraint on
any other objective you set. Making it the
prime objective, however, creates the
temptation to trade long-term gains in
operations-driven value away for temporary
gains in expectations-driven value. To get
CEOs to focus on the first, we need to
reinvent the purpose of the firm. This is what
customer-centric capitalism is all about.
- Irving
Wladawsky-Berger

Dr. Elijah Ezendu is Award-Winning Business Expert & Certified Management Consultant
with expertise in HR, OD, Competitive Intelligence, Strategy, Restructuring, Business
Development, Sales & Marketing, Interim Management, CSR, Leadership, Project &
Programme Management, Cost Management, Outsourcing, Franchising, Intellectual
Capital, eBusiness, Social Media, Software Architecture, Cloud Computing, eLearning &
International Business. He holds proprietary rights of various systems. He is currently CEO,
Rubiini (UAE); Hon. President, Worldwide Independent Inventors Association; Special
Advisor, RTEAN; Director, MMNA Investments Limited. He had functioned as Chair,
International Board of GCC Business Council (UAE); Senior Partner, Shevach Consulting;
Chairman (Certification & Training), Coordinator (Board of Fellows), Lead Assessor &
Governing Council Member, Institute of Management Consultants, Nigeria; Lead Resource,
Centre for Competitive Intelligence Development; Turnaround Project Director,
Consolidated Business Holdings Limited; Lead Consultant/ Partner, JK Michaels; Technical
Director, Gestalt; Chief Operating Officer, Rohan Group; Executive Director (Various Roles),
Fortuna, Gambia & Malta; Director, The Greens; Chief Advisor/Partner, D & E; Vice
Chairman, Refined Shipping; Director of Programmes & Governing Council Member,
Institute of Business Development, Nigeria; Member of TDD Committee, International
Association of Software Architects, USA; Member of Strategic Planning and Implementation
Committee, Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria; Adjunct Faculty,
Regent Business School, South Africa; Adjunct Faculty, Ladoke Akintola University of
Technology, Nigeria; Editor-in-Chief & Chairman of Editorial Board, Cost Management
Journal; National Executive Council Member, Institute of Internal Auditors of Nigeria;
Member, Board of Directors (Several Organizations). He holds Doctoral Degree in
Management, Master of Business Administration and Fellowship of Several Professional
Institutes in North America, UK & Nigeria. He is an author & widely featured speaker in
workshops, conferences & retreats. He was involved in developing Specialist Masters
Degree Course Content for Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (Nigeria) and Jones
International University (USA). He holds Interim Management Assignments on Boards of
Companies as Non-Executive Director.

Thank You