The role of IT in an age of customer-centricity

In an earlier piece about the changing role of the CIO I touched on how the need to offer customers a connected and consistent end-to-end experience has shifted the role of IT and the CIO to think more holistically about platforms that work across the organisation, and throughout the customer journey. I also introduced the frictionless customer journey as our ultimate ambition.?

Now I want to build on this thought. I want to consider how it connects to the broader concept of customer-centricity which most organisations have embraced, or at least claimed to embrace.

At DHL we have, for many years, made focusing on the needs of the customer a core strategic pillar which we refer to as being the Logistics Provider of Choice. And we have supported this through our ICCC (Insanely Customer Centric Culture) which builds customer-focused behaviours across the organisation.?

Even so, I will be the first to acknowledge that for people in the IT function the journey from understanding the idea of customer-centricity to embedding it in how they think and act every day is not an easy one.?

This is not surprising, especially in very large organisations, IT is frequently almost seen as an external service provider. There are SLAs in place with the business units which make sense internally, but create distance between IT and the end customer. And the methodologies IT professionals are most familiar with, such as PRINCE2, are focused on process, not on the customer.?

So, there are certainly challenges. But the rewards to the business of overcoming these challenges are significant. In future articles I will discuss key implications and benefits of building a more customer-centric IT team. How it changes the way we think about technology, what we do to see our world through the eyes of the customer, the importance of culture, and how ultimately it can turn IT from a cost-centre into a value creator.?

Before I go into those details however, I would like to finish with what I consider the starting point for this topic. Most organisations and, I think, most people in IT would naturally associate customer-centricity primarily with their customer-facing colleagues. But in a digital world, where every customer order or query starts on a screen, where the progress of every shipment is driven by data and the accuracy of the systems that process that data – in this world it is not an exaggeration to say that literally everything IT touches and is ultimately responsible for, has am impact on the customer and the quality of the customer experience. For that reason, when you ask what can be done to make that experience better, the answer will have to include IT.?