There seems to be a constant need to create new terms and definitions out there. Within the last two years customer obsession gets more and more attention. Although most companies struggle to understand what customer centricity means and how to apply, a new term arises in the east. So, the question emerges customer centricity or customer obsession which road to follow?
Customer obsession is linked with Jeff Bezos of Amazon. He outlined in a letter to his shareholders in 2016 that the culture of an organisation plays a vital part to be customer obsessed and therefore successful. Although the culture alone is not enough from our point of view there is no difference between customer centricity and customer obsession form our understanding. Bezos uses customer centricity as the most important management framework.
Some others state that the difference between customer centricity or customer obsession is the dynamic of how intense you are listening and co-creating with your customers. Only if you continuously listen and test and adapt you are truly customer obsessed. Our understanding of customer centricity is not so limited. Every organisation has to decided which intensity of co-creation adds the biggest value to customers and the organisation. There is no such thing as one single path to customer centricity heaven.
Nir Eyal wrote an article about how customer obsessed Netflix is. He created a table to show the differences between customer centricity and customer obsession.
Form our point of view there are several very severe misunderstandings within this visual. (1) Customer centricity is not only about listening; it is about co-creation. (2) Customer centricity does focus on actual und future needs of customers. (3) Customer centricity is based on customer value not only satisfaction. (4) Customer centricity focuses on strong relationships and not products or offerings. (5) Customer centricity is a management framework not a goal or target system.
If a company aims to build and defend a competitive advantage successfully, all good. Looking at the statements we can not discover any difference between our understanding of customer centricity and customer obsession. But we can witness a great misunderstand (again) what customer centricity really is. Given, that Disney is (quite successfully) entering the streaming market a few weeks ago (I do not understand why they speak so little in The Mandalorian), also not so sure, that Netflix will defend its competitive advantage successfully.
Customer centricity or customer obsession is not really a smart question. Customer centricity is customer centricity there is no “higher level” than being centric. But it looks like a new term is arising and for sure this will add a lot more confusion in many organisations. We are pretty sure that such new terms are not helpful at all to improve the customer centricity of an organisation in the first place. Improving customer centricity is still a big challenge absolutely no need to get obsessed.
