The Customer Centric Organization

"To be customer centric a company doesn’t need to create new technical competences, just to reorganize itself to create sustainable competitive advantages vis-à-vis the competition in its target customers."

It was mid-August and the request from the multinational company recently installed in Portugal arrived during John’s summer vacation (John is a fictional name). It would be quite difficult to win such a big project without a final visit to the customer facilities to outline the offer architecture.

Following groundwork and persistence, John was finally able to meet with the customer and to present his view on the project architecture. Engaged by the proposal presented by the sales manager, the customer collaborated and added his view to build a joint solution that would fit his primary needs.

After multiple challenging interactions and flexibility to adapt to the customer needs, John succeeded to sign a reference contract with this customer and followed the new plant growth during several years.

Perhaps intuitively, this sales manager used two properties of a customer centric organization: the ability to co-create solutions and the influence through knowledge.

In a nutshell, a customer centric organization is the one that solves the customer’s “problems” or challenges. Or, the one that understands the customer needs and suggests custom solutions by opposition of a set of standard products.

For a company, or an organization, to be customer centric it must have a set of organizational characteristics that differentiate it from the competition, keeping the technical competences needed to address its target market.

Co-creation of solutions

The customer has the best knowledge of its process, his strengths and weaknesses. Although an external consultancy is vital to introduce innovation and operational efficiency, the joint design of solutions creates more robust projects and significantly improves the personal relationships between stakeholders.

Consistent interface between contact points and through project lifetime

The sale of complex services or solutions typically gathers a team of about ten people from the seller and the buyer. On one side the organization must address the needs of the diverse stakeholders, while on the other it’s essential to assure a consistent interface throughout the pre and post sales processes. This can be assured by the nomination of a project leader and the definition of internal and external communication rules.

Influence customers through knowledge

Due to focus on productivity and increase of global competitivity, companies have limited resources to allocate on the search for innovative solutions or on learning about new technologies to improve process efficiency. This context grants an opportunity for an informed sales manager to prescribe solutions targeted to the customer’s pains.

Flexible organization

To adapt quickly to the market dynamics, an organization needs to be flexible and have the decision power quite close to the customer contact. The employees need to have power allocated and adequate training to take decisions aligned with the organization’s purpose.

Priority to most important customers

As relevant as the previous characteristics, is the ability to prioritize resources to the most important customers: those that generate the best results for the organization and whose development is aligned with the company strategy.

In short, to be customer centric a company doesn’t need to create new technical competences, just to reorganize itself to create sustainable competitive advantages vis-à-vis the competition in its target customers.

Originally published in Jornal Económico (content in Portuguese):

This and other posts are part of my new blog on customer centric organizations.