• Wellness, like customer-centricity, supports positive behaviors that are different from the status quo. Both programs show employees how to take ownership of projects that have a specific purpose—either better health and lifestyle or better results for customers.
• Individual ideas create interest in the overall change. Just as wellness programs spread the word through events, such as educational sessions, clubs or showcasing healthy snacks, customer-centric efforts focus on value-added outcomes that the company has achieved for customers, in order to promote more the same for the future.
• Also, until recently, organizations did not consider that efforts to improve wellness could yield so much in return. However, now they are realizing that wellness programs can significantly reduce their healthcare costs and increase worker satisfaction and productivity. In a similar way, customer-centricity not only reduces customer problems, but it also creates innovation because employees are more engaged in a singular purpose—to help their customers.

Customer-centricity is an attitude. It has to be powerful to break the product-centered continuum which has prevailed in most organizations until now. But it also is a program that will bring about positive change in employees and elevate their confidence to take care of customer needs. It also becomes the foundation of better overall health for the organization.

“There are assumptions you hold and
assumptions that have a hold on you”
–Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey

Assumptions that we hold create certainty for us. We like to believe that there is no different reality. But imagine that you have been driving all of your adult life in the US, where the steering wheel is on the left side of the car. With that paradigm, you automatically go to the right side of the car to get in if you are the passenger. When you travel to England, of course, it is natural to still head to the right side as a passenger even though you know that the steering wheel is on the right. Although it is confusing at first, we are able to adapt to the different way of operating.

In business, assumptions are much more difficult to change. The reason that change causes anxiety is not that we can’t accept that alternatives exist. It is that we have the feeling the change might leave us defenseless. So, we console ourselves with half-truths that our current supplier-centered structure is working fine and that we know what our customers need from us. We have created a system that is immune to change and relieves us from danger. Why risk changing a system that is already functioning well?

If you think this way, your company is not a good candidate to become customer-centric. You will be locked into a world in which the only changes will be “baby steps.” What we do in our client work is to help leaders understand their barriers to changing (other than the “it has always been this way” mindset) and to recognize the payback for the company as a result of greater flexibility and passion for exploring new ideas to benefit customers.

Becoming customer-centered is simple, but it requires significant changes in your corporate approach if you current culture is product-centered. If executive leadership is change-resistant, they are probably not going to make it past a few cosmetic changes.

Customer-centricity will create a new dimension of success that many companies cannot picture because they are being held back by their assumptions. The journey starts with the realization that success will come when a different organizational culture is in place and that it is worth the effort to change.

If you said that you want to become more customer-centered, that’s a good direction. However, this requires a full understanding of your current organizational culture and a re-orienting to move the business away from its product focus. Most product-centered organizations don’t realize how far they are from their customers.

So, as an exercise, eliminate all product considerations from your thoughts. If you need something to refer to as you formulate your vision of the future, imagine that you are selling “widgets”—a non-specific product. Now, concentrate only on your culture and describe how the behaviors in that culture will be different toward customers when this new approach kicks in.

A shift to customer-centricity requires a developmental stance by an organization and its leaders. But the change process cannot work effectively unless the organization can visualize what will be different. Leaders must agree what the new behaviors will look like and they have to communicate this new vision. It will only be successful if it is deeply rooted in the culture. It will only be successful when customer-centered behavior is a core value of the organization.

My work has found that truly customer-centered organizations are focused on anticipating customers’ needs and consultative in providing solutions that will solve these needs. That change does not happen by simply wishing it to be. Organizations have to be shown how to collaborate. Employees must be educated and empowered. Most importantly, the best indicator of this different, customer-centered culture is the ability to flag actions when performance for customers is not consistent with core values and knowing how to advocate for the customer by pointing out these inconsistencies and correcting them.

Put your organization on a journey that creates a customer-centered culture. Convince all employees in the company that they can be developers of creative new ideas for your customers. Design a culture that is empowered to “own” the customer in every interaction. Once that culture is defined, put your products back into the equation but with a completely new perspective. Where you are in two years will be dramatically different—and better.

Highly task-oriented leaders and workers focus only on getting the job done. They define the work and the activities required, put structures in place, plan, organize, and monitor. For them, completion of particular tasks becomes their measure of success.

This type of person is very capable of carrying out transactions with customers. However, the dilemma is that he or she feels that these encounters are sufficient to deliver customer satisfaction. They cannot see that there is much more available. A musician does not simply play the notes on a sheet of music. He or she puts his energy and emotion behind it. Otherwise, the effort is flat and lifeless. The same concept applies when connecting with customers.

How do you get these people past transactional thinking? Show them a new, higher-level category of success. Educate task-oriented employees as a group by demonstrating what a customer-centered culture would do. After showing them the new way, measure the progress of the organization and its subgroups. Knowing what you should be measuring—proactive ideas for customer, reduction in silo behaviors within the organization—is fundamental.

Customer-centricity will never happen unless there is a measure of the new behavior that the culture is trying to achieve.

In the commercial, of course, McEnroe is prepared for a confrontation with the National salesperson because other car rental companies typically assign a car to him without his input. Like most customers, he has been negatively conditioned from years of encounters with supplier-centric companies, which have established policies that are best for them. Unexpectedly, John is told that he can choose “any car in the aisle.” Surprised, he responds with his signature line — “Any car…??? You cannot be serious!”

There is a subtle concept revealed in the McEnroe commercial. John’s being ‘wowed’ was not caused by a courteous National employee, although the employee was, in fact, very courteous and upbeat. McEnroe’s delight was delivered because the organization recognized an opportunity to make customers’ lives easier and changed its policy.

Customer-centered organizations create positive customer conditioning. But this positive feeling must develop through a system that delivers great company-wide ideas, not through transactional courtesy on the part of individual employees. Every organization’s goal should be to design a culture that imagines itself on the receiving end of encounters and automatically thinks like its customers.

The employees know it. They hear it all the time from customers and they put up with it themselves. I recently spoke with one employee who told me that:

1. The bank invested a lot of money developing the system and doesn’t want to spend more (or admit its mistake).

2. Customers tolerate it. Apparently customers, in other words, don’t complain enough to warrant a change.

Fortunately, the front-line employees at this bank are difference-makers in their organization. The hospitality of these employees is fantastic. However, if these employees generally know how irritating the online banking system is, then why don’t the executives know it, as well? Are they using their system for their own financial transactions? If the investment in the computer system was hefty, it is undoubtedly embarrassing to admit the mistake and make an additional investment. Nevertheless, it needs to be done to stay competitive.

“Because customers tolerate it” is no longer an acceptable reason in any forward-thinking organization. Every dynamic company that cares about its customers must have a system to discover customer frustrations and to develop solutions to improve their processes proactively. It is one thing to talk about customer care; it is a completely different approach to share the journey with those customers by providing them with what they need and expect.

There are two ways to innovate:

Level 2 customer-centricity is built around incremental changes on behalf of customers. It represents designing logical improvements to what already exists. It might be thought of as inside-the-box (Rushkoff, Get Back in the Box) because it nudges the current state forward to become a better version of the product or process. It delivers higher value to the customer, but the customer is still carrying out the same action. For example, the E-ZPass RFID system pays drivers’ tolls for them electronically, reduces waiting times at toll booths, and produces a monthly statement of activity. Drivers are still paying their tolls, of course, but the process is more user-friendly.

Incremental change is fine. Most innovations, in fact, fall into this category because they are easier to envision. We can readily visualize the “what-if” results of a new feature being added to an existing product or service. Level 2 is built on the premise that every product or service has a potential that will be better in the future. The secret is the conviction that customers will value the change, even if they do not all choose to participate. Not all payers of tolls choose to use E-ZPass, for example, but the benefit for the ones who do sign up is worth it.

There is an even bigger way to develop new ideas by making the exception the rule. Level 3 customer-centricity represents breakthrough performance, creating concepts that did not exist before, rather than tweaking an existing product or service. It, therefore, has to be iconic; big ideas and deployment strategies are necessary. Alan Webber, in Rules of Thumb, tells a great story about Rosanne Haggerty’s approach to helping the chronic homeless in New York City. With a high-impact idea and some corporate financial help, her organization, Common Ground, renovated the Times Square Hotel into a model for change for hundreds of homeless New Yorkers and transformed the neighborhood. The effort proved that not only would the project work, but that a not-for-profit organization could help the homeless for one-third the expenses (per person) being spent at the time by city services.

The Common Ground prototype demonstrated to naysayers that the idea was doable, with a high chance of success. Webber writes, “The job of an iconic project is to make change believable.” The lesson is that big ideas can start with a demonstration model that proves the viability of a strategy. “Once people can see it, feel it, and benefit from it, then change isn’t an abstraction. It’s real.”

Innovation happens when organizations think like their customers. The decision to choose incremental change versus transformational change depends largely on the investment and degree of difficulty involved. But in both categories, the undertaking should be grounded in a belief that it’s okay to make the exception the rule. Organizations should constantly be looking for a better way to accomplish what they are doing. And it should always be based on the real-world needs of the customer.

The transformation to customer-centricity will happen more quickly if you are a good storyteller.

One of the best examples of change management is the Gloves on the Boardroom Table story, told by John P. Kotter in The Heart of Change and, more recently, shared by Chip and Dan Heath in Switch. A global corporation learned that its factories were purchasing 424 different kinds of work gloves because every factory had their own supplier and their own negotiated price. The price for a glove at some factories was over three times higher than what was paid for the identical glove at another factory.  The savings opportunity was approximately $1 billion over five years.

A team of employees assembled samples of all 424 gloves, labeled them with the current price, and put them in the boardroom. When executives were called in, they were amazed. A mandate for change came quickly and the gloves became part of a traveling road show to every corporate division and many plants. The tangible example and the dramatic presentation created a clear call to action because it was honest and, without coercion, it illustrated that there was a more sensible way to spend this money.

For me, this story demonstrates two things. First, the glove story is so compelling because executives can easily get their minds around internal efficiencies (or lack thereof) and opportunities to save money. Certainly we also can relate to how the inefficiencies developed in the first place. We have all experienced the silo mentalities that let practices develop without two-way communication among departments and divisions of companies. Organizations are comfortable dealing “inside the four walls” of their companies, since this is their traditional area of control.

Secondly, you should use similar creativity to sell customer-connection ideas within your organizations. If your team knows that customers will value the elimination of a process step or a change that will make their lives easier, your team members should compile data about the current state and tell the story about what the future could look like. Visual examples, such as the gloves in the boardroom, will make the argument more convincing. Clear reasoning will take you from a state of “I think we should…” to “Here is what change will mean to our customers.” That’s riveting. The key ingredient that data provides is a vision of the future. If you can show how customers will benefit in a quantifiable way, it will be easier for your organization to embrace the idea.

As Kotter observes, “people change what they do…because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.” Change on behalf of customers happens when an emotional case can be made about how that change will positively affect those customers and, in turn, the beneficial impact that it will have inside your organization, as well. Data will not only increase the urgency, but will raise the level of buy-in. After all, everyone loves a great story.

Disruptive innovation (The Innovator’s Solution, Christensen and Raynor) is easy to identify in hindsight, but much more challenging when it appears as relatively small changes that surround your organization. All ideas seem to be small ideas when they begin, especially when being accustomed to success lead your company to inertia and perhaps arrogance. The danger, of course, from a supplier’s standpoint is that not responding to these changes can cause you to set your expectations too low about what the customer wants. It is easy to think that customers simply want what we have been giving them all along. For valid reasons, psychological research has created the nomenclature “status quo bias” to define the fact that people basically like to leave things the way they are.

There are undoubtedly ideas in the everyday operation of your organization that are trending toward obsolete. They are just hard to see in the present and frankly, it is difficult to “ferret out ingrained assumptions that people never stop to question.” The more we are able to clear out the cobwebs in our minds, the less disruptive the years ahead will be.  Because we are faced with so many more complexities and alternative trends than in the past, the solution must be fact-based to overcome the blind spots. “Success in business ultimately depends on dealing with the facts,” writes Miller.

Make sure that your organization is prepared for change by putting some customer-centered monitors in place that will condition everyone to look for new ways by questioning the old ways. Put your own “GPS” system in place to recognize when a better route is available. Set up a process to pull information from the marketplace and to evaluate change on customers’ terms, not yours. This process is not about gloom and doom. Just the opposite—it will be a great platform to start discussions of ways to strengthen your organization by consistently looking for ways to outperform.

Flexicurity is what Matt Miller calls it (adapted from the buzzword originated in Denmark’s labor market). It is the confidence to search out Dead Ideas that your company is operating under and replace them with dynamic Destined Ideas which will shape a new direction. These ideas have a phenomenally greater chance of survival if they are grounded in what your customers need. So the flexibility of your organization delivers the security for the future. Imagine a delivery model in which your customers never felt they had to sacrifice anything because you were keeping them at the leading edge of new ideas. It’s powerful, isn’t it?

It is really difficult to gauge the impact of change while it is happening. You are too close to it. Don’t let success lead to arrogance, which holds you back from the willingness to question how long yesterday’s ideas will stay viable. The only remedy is to develop a system to help you be aware of challenges to your current ideas and to allow your organization to be adaptable to its customers.

Ranjay Gulati, author of Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business, shares some very perceptive insights in a recent interview (http://bit.ly/aHk8QU). He correctly advises that customer-centricity starts with a sense of curiosity about the customers of a business. If companies want to stay ahead of the commodity trap, their leaders must instill a mentality of constantly learning about customer needs and how they are changing.

Bain & Company Chairperson, Orit Gadiesh, echoes the same emphasis on curiosity and business success. (Harvard Business Review http://bit.ly/bnA3FG). She says, “To forge strong relationships and find solutions…it pays to ask lots of questions.” This is “the only way to get to a workable solution to any problem. Having access to a multitude of outside perspectives makes me…better.”  It is true that asking lots of questions will yield lots of new information that can be used to solve customer needs.

The passive, more slowly-paced reactions of the past no longer work. So, ask yourself whether you are an armchair leader or an explorer. If your organization’s sense of discovery has waned, find a solution that will jump-start the passion about customers again. This culture shift is stronger than simply listening to customers. Be aggressive. Peter Drucker, quoted in The Starfish and the Spider, believed that “the purpose of learning is (not) to qualify oneself for a new and bigger job,” but rather “is self-improvement. It qualifies a person to do his present task with continually wider vision and continually increasing competence.” Curiosity is the basis of how ideas both begin and evolve.

The end result of this sense of curiosity is organizational flexibility. As Gulati writes in his book, customer-centricity drives companies to “become adept at monitoring fluctuations in customizing solutions real time” and to “anticipate changing customer needs and offer value-based solution before customer can articulate them. In other words, all elements within the organization become aligned to adapt to customer needs. “The goal is to immerse yourself in customer problems so you can offer up unique solutions.”

Customer-centricity will not happen unless your organization is curious about customers and what they will need in the future. If you want your company to be customer-centered, create a culture that is continuously looking for ways to learn more about customers. Don’t become complacent. Be an explorer.