It’s a popular term, but I fear it can be applied to an organization based on the profit meter. The Halo Effect seems applicable here also. The temptation is calling highly profitable companies “customer focused” or having “customer centricity”, and then “not focused on customers” once their profits go down.
What is a clear indicator of an organization focused on customers? We first have in mind that customer focus doesn’t really mean “A focus on the customer at the expense of doing business with the customer”. If that were the case, everything would be free. How can a business provide fanatical service other than giving their service or product away for free? If “customer focus” were to be more fully defined, it might be:
- A prioritization of customer needs and pleasure, both seen and hidden, balanced with, and never at the expense of, the organization’s desire to exist with profit and pleasure. *
- A manager is given enough power and autonomy to study the customer experience, customer needs, and product or service of the company, and directly control the defects and additions under the fewest and most simple constraints.*
It seems that the opposite happens more often. Different divisions and manager have control over different parts of the product, or the power to initiate dependencies, and their needs must be met in a 12 way compromise. That seems to be one of the factors at the genesis of my old phone, the Nokia E70. You will notice that phone had triple the technical features of the iPhone 3 years ago, but who cares?
This principle will be a guide towards a customer focused company:
Those closest to the product/service should wield the greatest influence over its improvement.
Minzberg shows how a company can be organized to better meet customer needs (market oriented grouping), or one that structured to have better standards (functional grouping). It’s not cut and dry of course, but crucial none the less. Company design IS the way to orient focus.
