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.

A simple example, of course, although the ‘digital’ angle is worth thinking about. We live in a world where customers and clients, whether our organisations are B2B or B2C, can explore, examine, compare and contrast our offering (and our reputation) quickly and easily. They expect websites to be both informative and helpful, and preferably interactive in the truest sense: i.e. that they can pose questions and receive appropriate answers. Organisations can no longer ‘broadcast’: they have to be prepared to receive and ready and able to respond. The Internet doesn’t just give us a voice: it can also give us ears. Compared with twenty years ago, customers are hugely more empowered and enabled. In prioritising the customer’s viewpoint in this way, the digital world doesn’t so much turn organisations inside out as outside in.

Attitude and culture can’t be changed at the flick of a switch