What is being customer centered like ?

Customer-centric (also known as client-centric) is a business strategy that's based on putting your customer first and at the core of your business in order to provide a positive experience and build long-term relationships. - superoffice.com 

Happened to read the article in HBR of Oct '18 on 6 ways to build a customer centric culture by Denis Lee Yvon. (click here) 

A company which gives the best product and service to customer will never ever fall short of customers as existing satisfied customers will help new customers to try the product. 

Customer centredness in other words means creating a positive experience for the customers. Getting the operations personnel in the organisation to understand the customer concerns and his/her pain points will help the organisation to understand the organisation better. 

This includes the following points 

1. maximise service / product offerings 

2. build relationships 

3. respect customer preferences 

4. keep cusomer satisfaction at the forefront of business growth 

5. engage with customers in innovative ways to understand customer preferences'

6. include customers in corporate decision making 

7. include customer in futire product/ service planning of the company 

8. involve customer to know his/her pain points in the interaction and try to solve them 

9. give more than what the customer wants or asks for 

10. given quality items and service offerings to customers to ensure repeat purchases 

11. meeting customers in person in fixed time intervals 

As per the above author, the organisation can build a customer centric culture as given below 

1. operationalise customer empathy 

2. hire for customer orientation 

3. decentralise customer insights 

4. facilitate interactions of employees with customers 

5. link employee culture to customer outcomes 

6. tieng employee compensation with customer service, giving employees skin in the game

7. adding strong reverse logistics network to handle customer returns unsatisfied products

 Amazon is said to be one of the best customer centred organisations in the world be it in the case of forward logistics or reverse logistics (returning unliked or poor quality items) without asking a single qiestion. The author heas been a beneficiary of this ASmazon India customer centred approach many a time and is highly appreciative of it.

The amazing growth of Amazon globally is indicative of the extreme customer centred approach it nourishes as part of the company culture.