One of the greatest barriers to a customer-centric approach is the difficulty in establishing a clear ROI for the effort. Lacking financial justification, customer-centricity simply becomes the "fad of the day" for the CEO, sure to drop off the next time the business falters in any way.
Why is this so?
Lynn Hunsaker, in a post on Customer Think (www.customerthink.com), suggests in a roundtable discussion that the problem is that customer-centricity is viewed as an add-on, not a reinvention of fundamental business processes around the customer.
She notes that few companies have "crossed the chasm" to become customer-centric; most of the famous companies started out that way.
What has been your experience? Do you have any examples of companies reinventing themselves around their customers?
Customer Centricity Link to Customer Experience ROI
As customer-centricity of an organization increases, customer experience management return on investment also increases.
Typically five times as many executives think theyre customer centric relative to the number of customers who agree.
Organizational design and change management are critical components of getting to customer-centricity; a disruptive element is necessary to acknowledge that the company is organized to do business in an internally focused way, and to address the prevalent attitude: "Well, I know we have to change, but we can't stop doing what got us here."
This can't be done by a single operating area; people have to align themselves across the current process, improve it, and take it to the next level by re-thinking the experience and all of the different parts involved in it.