Are customers the point of focus for all the activities of your organization? Perhaps, it's time to give another look at your business operations. The business environment has never been as demanding as it is now and neither will the future bring any relief. The forces of globalization, rapid technology change, increased customer expectations, highly-focused and formidable competitors, and fast-changing economic trends have come together to present your organization with an almost overwhelming challenge. In response to these trends, a seemingly endless array of tools have been created to provide us with the means for survival and success of the organization. We have six sigma to refine our business processes; we outsource those functions which are not core competencies; we have customer relationship management to deepen our knowledge of customers, supply chain management software to help us work with suppliers and the inventory we want to avoid; buzz marketing helps us sell products; mass customization helps us satisfy the unique needs of each customer; search-engine marketing enhances our rankings on Google and Yahoo, and the balanced scorecard helps us measure our effectiveness. Individually, these tools help us make our businesses more efficient in narrowly-defined functions but often fail to provide competitively superior customer value. Despite the creation of all the previously mentioned tools, the American Customer Satisfaction Index is at the same level as it was in 1994. In addition, low-cost manufacturers continue to push down prices and commoditize what were seemingly great and difficult to replicate products. While companies search for quick fixes and silver bullets, a key to success is right in front of them-the customer.
What many companies have forgotten is that the customer is the foundation of business, and as the 20th Century's most influential management expert Peter Drucker reminds us, the purpose of business is to create a customer. Providing your customers with competitively superior value requires the creation of a culture that is driven by the customer. Every department, process, procedure, and system must be designed and managed to provide higher levels of value to customers. The organization must put the customer first in everything it does and they must be the unifying force between divisions, departments and issues.
This crucial component of a successful business culture has different names such as customer- centricity, customer intimacy, marketing-oriented and consumer empowerment. While everyone may have a favorite term, I will use `customer focus' as the appellation for placing the customer at the center of attention in everything an organization does. The key to being customer-focused is an intense desire to provide competitively superior levels of value to customers.
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