Becoming customer-centric: a question of culture

When we talk about ‘customer-centric organisations’, what do we actually mean? And how do we recognise one when we see one? Let me give you a very simple example. Recently, an ASK colleague was travelling to London by train for an evening appointment on a very tight timescale. All was proceeding smoothly until their train ground to a halt a mile beyond the most recent station. The train guard was, of course, apologetic, but plainly had little concrete information to impart. In this digital age, my colleague pulled out his phone to find out if Twitter could enlighten him. This being an age of not just privatisation but of keen commercial competition, the particular route is served by two rival train companies, but running Twitter feeds. Yet where one was giving as little information as the on-board guard (except to emphasise that tickets would not be valid on alternative routes), the other – which would, on a normal working day, have closed for the night an hour earlier – was responding to each inbound tweet, offering advice on alternative routes, and taking customer names to ensure their tickets would be honoured on alternative trains. Short of making the train move again, an impressive and truly customer-centric approach.