Many business leaders tell us that creating a customer-centric culture is the biggest challenge on their path to customer centricity. In fact, our experience from our work with clients from a variety of industries and in various countries shows us that many organisations really struggle with that task. Our experience also teaches us that companies that master the task successfully are more profitable.
But why is it so hard to have a customer-centric culture? What makes it so difficult is that a company needs to make smart decisions on as many as five levels to achieve their aim:
- On a customer level: How to involve customers into the relevant aspects of value creation
- On an employee level: how to achieve the right customer-centric commitment and behaviour
- On an intra-organisational level: how to enable real company-wide collaboration with customers in mind
- On an inter-organisational level: how to ensure a customer-focused cooperation with partners
- On an infrastructure level: which systems and tools to use for the best effect
Most organisations we observe focus on levels two and/or level five of the list above. The other three dimensions are often disregarded. Of course – while this is not sufficient – it is a good starting point.
A recent article in the Harvard Business Review recommends six steps that have the power to move an organisation’s culture towards more customer centricity. You can find the article here. For one of our previous blog posts on the importance and pre-requisites of a customer-centric culture click here.
