Why Customer-Centric Leadership Matters…and What One Business School is Doing About It

When the first Walmart store opened its doors in 1962, there were no orange-lined parking spaces reserved for grocery pickup. If you were shopping in-store that day, you wouldn’t have noticed Scan & Go options, Walmart Pay terminals, or giant orange towers delivering online purchases. 

In all likelihood, as a modern shopper, you would’ve been appalled by Walmart #1’s lack of digital sophistication.

But, that first Walmart did have a lot going for it. 

One thing in particular: Sam Walton. A consummate entrepreneur and visionary leader, Mr. Sam could see beyond the horizon on retail technology, merchandising, and, most certainly, customers.

Sometimes, I wonder what he would think about today’s hyperconnected, omnichannel retail industry—with so much of the innovation exuding from the company he founded.

Mr. Sam probably would have wasted little time tracing the digital developments of the last few decades—from mobile apps to endless aisles—to their implications for serving customers. For him, everything was about the customer. After all, it was he who famously said, “There is only one boss; the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

Confronted by today’s digital retail services, I suspect Mr. Sam would have felt inclined to reiterate this idea: The customer is the boss.

Walton College Gets Customer-Centric

Given Walton’s intense focus on customers, it’s very fitting that his namesake business school, the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, is now poised to lead the way in conversations about serving today’s customers.

I’m honored and excited to lead the college’s new Customer Centric Leadership Initiative (CCLI). CCLI will go right at the customer-as-boss philosophy, which was so important to Mr. Walton and so crucial to retail success today. 

Through a program of education, research, and outreach, CCLI will support and promote Walton College as a locus for scientific research, critical thinking, and robust dialogue around serving today’s customers. 

The target audience? Today and tomorrow’s business leaders. And what better place than a vibrant business school and research hub, the Sam M. Walton College of Business, to make these connections. 

Emphasis on Walton.

I’ve had the privilege to observe and work with customers in many different capacities, including as founder/CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi X, SVP of Marketing at Walmart, and, most recently, chief customer officer at Asda. If my tours through the wilds of customer experience taught me one thing, it’s that customer-centricity matters.  

Thanks to technology, customers today have the power. Yet organizations consistently fall short of delivering on their customer experience expectations. And so, it’s high time current and future business leaders embraced fresh thinking and new conversations about the all-important customer experience (CX).

CCLI will use its unique position at the intersection of academic inquiry and retail practice to prepare students and empower executives to engage customers.

By focusing attention on the emerging issues and pressing questions surrounding customer engagement, CCLI will equip scholars, students, business leaders, and regulators with the tools to better serve today’s customers.

Given the forces impinging on retail and customers right now, has it ever been more needed?  

What’s To Come?

Over the coming weeks, CCLI will begin publishing podcasts, videos, and social content around customer-centricity and related topics. This high-quality content will feature some of the most influential, well-respected minds in retail and customer engagement today.

Just follow CCLI’s LinkedIn page for the latest content and news, as we all strive to better understand the original words of Sam Walton.

There is only one boss; the customer.