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V. K. Madhav Mohan

Customer centricity is something everyone talks about but hardly anyone practices. It’s really quite shocking to see that even today many businesses and companies treat their customers as “necessary evils” to be exploited, cheated, taken for granted or otherwise inconvenienced. Since IT is now available for every application CRM is almost universal. But in that process customers have been reduced to numbers like prisoners serving life terms!

One of the guiding principles of change management is that those who are likely to be affected by change need to be involved in the formulation of that change. Only then can ownership of the change be built. And without that ownership every change programme is doomed to fail. This principle is inviolable.

People have to be involved in the process of decision making in a manner that their concerns are addressed. That does not mean agreement on everything; when people are provided opportunities to articulate concerns and points of view without let or hindrance they own the process of decision making even if the final decision is at variance with their own points of view. The implementation of the decision then becomes more easy, complete and meaningful to all concerned.

From that standpoint we need to ask how many companies have actually interfaced meaningfully with customers to design processes, products and services? The answer, depressingly, is very, very few. And therein lies the need for customer centricity as a condition precedent for survival in an increasingly tightening economic environment.

Customer centricity is going to be the new determinant of competitive edge and may indeed be the differentiator between a host of competitors. Slowing of credit in particular and economies in general is certain to intensify competition like never before. Fierce battles are going to be fought over the same small slivers of market segments.

From lofty analyses let me swoop down to the front lines of customer service and weave my Papaya Theory of Customer Centricity from two real examples!

It’s lunchtime and chef Himanshu is cooking up a storm in the open kitchen in the centre of the restaurant! Out of the corner of his eye he’s scanning the restaurant and every customer. Are they comfortable, have any regulars arrived, do they need anything ….these are the questions racing through his mind as he works the wok!

Chef Himanshu is a good example of customer centricity. He’s constantly interacting with customers in the restaurant and delivers the exact preferences of his regular guests. He also personally tastes every one of the more than 100 dishes that are placed on the buffet to ensure that everything is just right.

And since he’s visible in the restaurant at all times, leading from the front, his production and service team is constantly focused on attending to every need the guests in the restaurant may have. That incidentally is also an important leadership principle: when your team sees you often, they will follow you even when if they disagree with you. Small wonder then that chef Himanshu’s restaurant is among the finest restaurants of its genre anywhere in the world.

On two separate occasions I left behind my iPod and some expensive headphones on the seat of the aircraft I’d just travelled by. On both occasions I realised my mistake almost 24 hours later. When I informed the airline, the staff was not only courteous, they actually ensured that I received the iPod and headphones within a short time. So I would rate them highly for customer centricity.

But to obtain 10 on a 10 point scale for customer centricity they’d have to go further: instead of waiting for a customer to contact them about lost property they must have a built-in systems and mindset combo that ensures that they spot the lost property, trace it to the right customer and contact her before she contacts them. Plus, the cabin crew must know that I have a tendency to leave behind my property on the aircraft and so they must unobtrusively ensure that I don’t. That would be complete customer centricity!

Customer centricity is very elusive and extremely difficult to achieve. To understand the nuances, let’s go back to the restaurant example. The production of food is complex, highly susceptible to problems with raw material quality and hygiene of people and processes, not to mention cost variability.

Therefore, tight monitoring and control is mandatory at every step. The last mile in the process is the actual serving and presentation of the food to the customer. If all the steps prior to the presentation of food at the table are perfect, so far so good. But the entire train can be derailed if the last step is botched from the customer’s perspective.

Suppose, the finest papaya is ordered, cleaned, cut and presented to the customer. However, when the fruit arrives at the table the size of each piece is too large for a bite. Then, the customer has to take a knife and fork and cut all the pieces into two or three smaller bite-sized pieces before he eats it. That’s such a waste of time, particularly if it’s at breakfast and the customer is rushing to office. It’s so inconvenient!

The chef may feel, and rightly so, that the larger pieces look and keep better and are easier to produce in the kitchen. But why should the customer have to resort to a further process to make the pieces bite sized? To be customer centric, ceteris paribus, the chef will necessarily have to reverse engineer his production process to ensure that only bite-sized pieces arrive at the table.

That’s what I call the Papaya Theory of Customer Centricity! Make sure that the papaya is convenient for the customer! One effective way to do that and ensure customer centricity is to commission third party audits of customer satisfaction and link the findings to the key performance indicators of the top management. Customers will then keep coming back for more papaya! That could well be the key to survival in these troubled times.

More Stories on : Management | IT'S LONELY AT THE TOP

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