What is Customer 3D™?

Organizations that are focusing on customers as the center
of their work, are demonstrating a new dimension of performance, separating them from their competition. Until now, it did not have a name. Now we call it Customer 3D™.

Customer 3D™ is important in three ways:

A System: Customer 3D™ is a system to transform product-centric organizations into customer-centric. Unlike reactive, controlling approaches, it is flexible and shapes company cultures to proactively think like their customers. Its design supports a fresh, type of unselfish concern for customers to the point that every action employees take is done for their customers, not to them. The 3D organization attracts customers because of positive qualities that include:

• A purpose outside the four walls of the organization
• An attitude that extends beyond a sales mindset so that a purchase is secondary to the purpose
• A sense of direction
• Strong customer relationships

Customer 3D™ is a philosophy and management style that allows companies to be the most customer-centered in their industries. What it is NOT is a one-dimensional performance by organizations that says they WOW or dazzle or delight their customers.

A Strategy: Visionary leaders know that the greatest opportunity for outperforming traditional business models will come by proactively connecting with customers. They have learned to leverage a purposeful approach to customer relations in order to create a high-performance culture. Customer 3D™ organizations have a clear customer strategy, which balances the product and financial strategies already in place. These strategies are:

• Humanistic strategies for what the organization wants to accomplish and how to focus on empowerment of employees to “do the right thing” to improve customer closeness.

• Customer strategies focused on making life easier for the customer. Employees have the ability to think in terms of “What value do we have and how do we give it to our customers?”

This customer strategy is outcome-driven and specific, thus it allows goals to be established for the organization. Once goals are established, it is easy to execute the steps toward achieving that strategy and to then measure improvement trends. Customer 3D™ is far more than simply being nice to customers. It is a heightened skill-set, driven by an attitude which permeates the corporate culture and generates fresh, customer-centered ideas that impact the bottom line.

A Movement: Customer 3D™ is a movement that is being championed by companies that are exceptional in customer interaction. This is the standard that customers will be measuring others against in the future.

Recently, consultants have degraded the term ‘customer-centric’ by lowering the standards to include basic customer service. Customer 3D™, on the other hand, uses a more rigorous definition that involves pro-activity for the customer and purposeful change throughout an organization, rather than good transactional performance for customers.

The organizations that will survive and prosper in the next five years will have expanded beyond the shallow product focus that used to be acceptable, to a performance dimension that customers will value and come to expect. Customer 3D™ will take them to that new dimension.

Are you ready for 3D?