Spotlight

A simple-to-follow approach to building a genuinely customer-centric business

Unlike traditional strategy development approaches, customer-centricity puts the customer at the centre of everything – hence Spotlight. Mission and vision statements, key initiatives and so forth are still important but the core of the approach comprises three steps:

  1. Listen to what your customers want/need – this is more than just ‘voice of the customer’, it’s about understanding customers unspoken needs. This requires:

    Actively listening to what customers are saying, not only about their experiences, wants and needs. This bit is obvious. What you do differently is drive towards an understanding of their unstated needs. And it’s also important not to over-do this stage.

    Outcome-analysing your customers’ feedback. Outcome-based thinking opens new techniques to understand your customer – better than your competition and possibly better than they understand themselves.

  2. Think creatively about how to deliver this enhanced outcome to the customers you want then test that delivery – seeking early feedback from customers is essential. Since your strategy emphasises understanding customers better than your competition, you’ll be developing a critical competence in turning that understanding into something the customer wants to buy in preference to anything else.
  3. Link the changes to tangible measures that include customer, company (P&L) but also employee, stakeholder and social agenda. And link the changes with other plans that the organisation has – to be successful, a customer-centric strategy must work across the whole organisation.

Spotlight can be deployed in a tailored workshop or project format, whichever is most suitable for your situation. For further details please contact me.