Customer centricity is a word bandied around the most across conference rooms and in business discussions. Yet most debates in boardrooms focus on either product centricity (what are the strengths of our product and how do we make it relevant to consumers?) or competition centricity (how can we make our product look and feel better than the competition? ). While there is a focus on the customer’s view in such discussions, everything starts either from inside (our product) or from the world immediately outside us (other products). The customer exists only for us to make the sale to. Most customer researches also reflect the same bias. The research either explores the relevance of our product in customers’ lives or explores how our product (and its communication) is being perceived vis-a-vis competition. So, how much of business thinking is truly customer-centric?
The Japanese school of TQM (Total Quality Management) ensures that every product that comes off a production line is defect-free. This reflects the Japanese penchant for “perfection in everything”. It helps increase production efficiency and ensures nothing needs to be reworked. It helps the customer get high-quality, reliable products. But was TQM an outcome of customer centricity or a by-product of cultural attitude and production excellence coming together?
Many brands, especially in the fast-moving consumer goods category, have offered product in different pack sizes and forms to enable the consumer to buy more of it. Is this customer-centric thinking or still inside-out thinking, that is, business generation thinking? How can we get more revenue from the customer by making the product more accessible, convenient for her to buy it more times?
Customer centricity is about understanding the ecosystem in which a product is operating in the customer’s life and working towards making every element of the