What is "customer-centricity" and what role should it play in the corporate culture?

Eric, thanks for asking that question, because the more it gets asked, the more mindshare it will gain and positive impact on the cultures within organizations.

To Rosanne Dausilio's point, Customer Centricity should play a leading role in the organizational strategy, product development, sales, marketing and customer service tactics that impact the customer experience.

That said, I'll expound on Rosanne's response with some content of a recent blog post, which addressed the same topic:

"Customer Centric means putting the customer at the center of everything that you do, or, doing everything with the customer in mind.

Customer centric means thinking from the outside, in:

As employees of companies, we tend to become very internally focused. We think in terms of policies, procedures and products. Customers look at these things as ease of doing business, convenience and solutions. As a company, customer centric means before making any decision, consider how that decision will impact the customer experience.

Customer centric means designing your products from the customer’s perspective:

How will the customer use it? Under what conditions will they use it? How can we make it easy to use, for the customer, in their world?
Example: All of Apple’s products just seem to work the way we work and play. They’re easy.

Customer centric means designing your sales process to make it easy for the customer to buy from you.

Example: Dry cleaners that offer home and o
ffice delivery service.

Customer centric means providing customer service that's easy for the customer.

Easy to get repairs, technical support or return a product. Forget policies. Forget processes that are designed for your internal efficiency alone. Design your customer service center and procedures in a way that will make the customers’ lives easier. Think LL Bean with their no questions asked return policies.

Customer Centric means always thinking in terms of the customer, to make their experience with you as good as it can be. The ultimate reward of customer centricity is customer loyalty, consistent revenue streams and higher margins."

Thanks again, Eric and Rosanne.

Jim Watson
Link to the orgininal Blog post: http://bit.ly/gkRTcM

Customer-centric focus also requires a new definition of exactly who the customer is. The default definition is usually the outside customer, the one who is purchasing the end product or service offered by the organization. However,for the organization to provide the highest quality product or the best in class service, it is reliant on every process within it to succeed in its objectives. For this reason, it is important for each department or function within the organization to define its own internal customers as well. This does not mean losing focus on the ultimate purchasing customer, but it does mean recognizing the importance of meeting or ideally exceeding the needs of the work teams within the organization. For example, the IT department for a grocery retailer may not have direct "touch' with the shoppers who purchase groceries, so if there are customer complaints about high rates of spoilage in produce, there is not a lot of direct improvement that IT can effect. However, if the IT department defines its customers as the order processing department, the online sales department and the purchasing department, as well as ultimately the shopper, and focuses on the needs of the internal customers because these are the ones with whom they have greatest direct impact, they can more effectively target ways to impact improvement. They may, for example, work with the purchasing department to rate vendors for quality of produce, or find ways to accelerate online customer order fulfillment and then subsequently monitor, measure and enhance improvements to the new systems. So the key to being customer-centric is focusing on the true customer, internal or external, that you or your department directly impact, and exceeding their expectations. Numbers do matter if they are used as a means of measuring or monitoring improvement, just as qualitative feedback from the internal customers also matter.

These are all excellent responses, and to add to what has been said, I think another way to demonstrate the company's commitment to customer centricity is by reaching out to the customer and getting their feedback directly on the services/products they are receiving. Whether that be through focus groups, telepone calls, surveys, etc. It's one thing to say we as a company are customer centic and we do all of these things to be customer centric, but the real question is how effective are these things that we are doing, and what better way to find out than to ask... the customer.