Source MidJourney, prompt by Karmacarey69704

What is “customer-centric”?

Companies derive value not from selling, but from their customers purchasing. A purchase is driven by motivation. And that motivation is based on the situation surrounding and shaping the need and desired outcome of their customers.

Schematic by the author.

To understand why we are selling today or what we will be selling tomorrow we need to understand what shapes customer demand. This has got very little to do with us, and a lot to do with them (human, culture, society, technology etc.).

I believe nobody needs a product (or a service etc.). What people are looking for is a means to serve a need in a given situation (or a job to be done). There are many ways to serve a need and successful companies offer products, services, information etc. that all serve the customer’s needs through different means. (e.g. an airline will offer a seat on a plane, but also a mobile application to make sure your travels are served in the best way).

The customer’s Job is based on a need and a desired outcome. They hire/aquire a product/service/etc. to help do this job (Christensen). Schematic by the author.

An organization’s benefit from understanding the customer’s situation (relationships and influences that leads to motivation and decisions) is their ability to improve their current offering, and discover better and more needs to serve (and recognize where to have the most influence).

There are many ways to serve the customer: From different offerings within the same experience to different experiences altogether. What they have in common is that they are all serving the customer. Even if we invent the technology or the solution, we cannot invent the need — it has to be inherent in the customer.

I believe organizations are fine-tuned mechanisms and organisms tailored to the needs they have decided to serve. But I also believe organizations can forget why they exist and become focused on what they are (Levitt).

Successful organizations have their customer’s needs at the heart of their business model, they understand the context and the need driving their desired impact. Then strive to influence or design their business from culture and mindset to strategy, technology, data, processes and collaboration to be the best possible to get this done.

The OS Canvas by The Ready demonstrates how the organization operates by design (concious or unconcious).

They have a strategy, measurements and incentives in place to hold their decisions and actions accountable, to create a connected view of the organization with a clear line-of-sight from their strategies and capabilities to their output, value to the customer and impact to the business.

Most of what a company does can be rooted back to its ability to efficiently discover, design for and serve its customers’ needs. Schematic by the author.