Customer Obsession

The importance of a consistent customer focus cannot be overemphasised, it is the major determinant of the success or failure of an organisation. Simply put, without happy customers a business will not survive.

The customer should always be at the forefront of any improvement initiative, optimising around the customer, not around internal operations & resources. Shrinking your product range to reduce complexity and cut costs is not a lean initiative. Lean initiatives aim at reducing waste but simultaneously maximising customer value. For example, a lean initiative may replace the 3 slowest moving SKUs with 3 new products, specifically developed to address unmet identified customer needs/desires.

This customer-focused approach is nothing new, but occasionally we need to be reminded that the customer should never be dogma for any improvement.

Amazon’s growth strategy is based on one thing; customer obsession. “Customers are always dissatisfied, they always want a better way, but do not know why”. (Jeff Bezos) The single most important thing for a Lean Organisation is to understand as much about your customers as possible, demand patterns, satisfaction levels, emerging trends etc. Once you understand your customers better than anyone else, the critical product/service attributes that truly matter to them most become obvious. Product/process development can then bring the entire company together as an aligned, customer-focused lean enterprise.

Customer obsession forces us to seriously look at what our competitors do and to tear down their products or services to try and outperform them.

Customer obsession goes with the idea of “once a customer, always a customer” and will consequently lead us to be prepared for changing consuming modes, environmental expectations, looming competition and other threats.

“Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival”. Demming.

The message for today….whenever making an improvement, ask; “how is this going to add value to the customer” not “how is this going to make our lives easier”. Often you will find that by simplifying processes, eliminating waste and making an internal improvement, the customer will be positively impacted whether it is a reduction in errors & complaints, reduced waiting time, improved product quality etc. Start looking at improvements through the eyes of the customer, questioning the impact and identifying ways to further improve the customer experience.

So, the next time you are making an improvement or working with a CI team to develop solutions, step back and ask the questions “What do our customers really care about? What can we do to ensure they get what they want every time?”.