Observing Customer-Centricity From An Outside Perspective

Ever since I began aligning my thinking to customer-centricity and an outside-in approach to life, I’ve seen good and bad examples everywhere. Gee, you’d think being a CRM consultant would have exposed me to this on a daily basis. Well, it did. I just wasn’t paying attention to it. Many in my field, including myself, were more focused on the technology of things. And more often than not, the only criticism we had was that we were only dealing with the sales organization; or worse, the IT department. When I looked back at where I started my career, this technology focus really started to bug me.

For the past few years I’ve started breaking down companies I visit into their respective locations on the customer-centric maturity scale. Well, “a” customer-centric maturity scale. There are a number of scales out there. One post I wrote reflected my opinion on the complexity of some models. Then there is the new book by Ranjay Gulati that identifies the pillars of a resilient organization. No…