Category: Musings

There might be no end ..but there is always a beginning

Evangelizing customer centricity within my organization, I had a conversation wherein my colleague was highlighting to the various initiatives & plans of action organizations undertake to build customer centricity. He seemed to be aware of a lot many things that people were doing out there – but not done in his own organization. In fact he knew so many, that he didn’t know where to begin himself.

I wonder if this is typical of many out there – we can so easily reel out a list of things that people ought to be doing. But when it comes to our own self, we might be non-starters (baked in the squat – as Zig puts it).

There is no end to the things one can do wrt customer centricity. But there is always a beginning. Have you found yours?

What is a customer centric organization?

A post by a fellow blogger triggered this thought process in me – What is a customer centric organization?

I would believe that the following are some key identifiers of a customer centric organization –

  • customer centricity is a strategic imperative rather than a group or department or annual or marketing initiative
  • the decision making process in the organization places the impact of the decision on the customer as its focal point
  • customer success is a key consideration across the rank & breadth of the organization
  • a strong belief that customer success & customer service is what will eventually lead to organizational profits
  • customer focus is a key element of the organization’s culture
  • customer loyalty is constantly & actively sought

Corporations are people

It was that time in the elections where the US presidential candidates took off on corporations. Responding to this phenomenon, Jack Welch in his BW column rightly argues that corporations are nothing but people.

As pointed in another blog post today on the 1to1 blog, this has relevance to B2B marketers too. When corporations make decisions, it has to be understood that it is people behind the scenes who are making these calls. Instead of targeting corporations – think about & target the people who make up the coporations.

Even when focusing on customer satisfaction of these corporations, pick u individual after individual & chase their satisfaction.
Over the last couple of weeks, a business trip too me across 4 time zones / 10 flights / 9 cities in a period of 2 weeks. I have to mention to you an air hostess experience on one of these flights –

A passenger seated next to me was asleep when the air hostess made the “beginning decent – buckle up” announcement. In a few minutes, an air hostess walks up, wakes up my neighbour & tells to buckle up as already announced. Just as he was buckling up, he is curtly told that the announcement also asked passengers to straighten the seats.

A couple of days later, I was on the same airline & came across another similar incident.

This time an air hostess walks up, apologetically wakes up the passenger. Requests him to buckle up & straighten the seat. When the passenger forgot to straighten the seat, the same air hostess returns to courteously requests him to straighten the seat again. She quickly adds that some of the seats have a problem of tilting on their own at times.

Which customer experience do you think will result in the customer having a positive feeling about the airline?
Factually, the air hostess in the first case might be correct. But does anyone want to be reminded about it? How many of us are purely rational?