Columbus and the Statue of Liberty

Welcome back.

I cannot tell you how pleasing it is to see that once again you have navigated your way safely through the communications super highway to see what insight, drivel and bile has been spewed forth this week. Cicero shall of course not let you down and shall make your visit and efforts worthwhile.

No update from my TSSB this week.

And following on from last week’s discourse on ASBO kids with photofit features, most of the feedback received tends to be around what kind of grapes Cicero likes. Cicero has also been informed that this topic has become the subject of an active Twitter debate….whatever that might be. I do not understand why this topic should be of such concern to bird watchers. Anyway, no matter. For the record Cicero likes his grapes green and peeled.

Is your business customer centric? Course it is. Your Chief Executive tells you it is and your marketing chief will tell you that it is their role to make your business customer centric. How do I know this? Just a hunch and years of cynicism.

But has anyone ever stopped and thought what exactly it means to be customer centric. I only ask because I heard some head honcho say this recently and I asked him what he meant and what he was doing. The panic on his face and the bluster in his voice revealed so much. And it set Cicero thinking. What exactly is customer centricity? And how do we know when we are customer centric?

Cicero is reminded at this point of Columbus when he poses such a question. When Columbus set out for America he did not know where he was going. When he got there he did not know where he was. And when he got back he did not know where he had been. Is the same true for customer centricity? Although I don’t understand Columbus for surely the Statue of Liberty was a bit of a clue to where he was.

Anyway back to the meaning of customer centricity.

For some it’s about making products and services that customers want to buy based on meeting a real need. Sorry but that’s what marketing is all about. Surely customer centricity means more than that.

For some businesses, customer centricity is about leadership and culture where staff are motivated to go the extra mile for customers. So now we have two definitions.

For others it’s about data and they would argue that by gathering as much data as you can about and from your customers and then employing people with brains the size of planets, so unlike me, to analyse this to the precision and depth of circumcising gnats, they can develop offers driven by this data. Others will re-design processes so that these fit around the customer rather than making the customer fit around their processes.

And as the Irish comedian said, come here, there’s more.

Yet another school will define customer centricity in terms of customisation and personalisation. Every customer is different so we need to organise products, services and communications to fit individual preferences and priorities.

So what is it? Is it about products or culture or process design or data or customisation? Now do you see the problem? Might I suggest you ask in your business and see how many definitions you get.

Now you could answer that maybe it’s the whole lot. And you might be right but no business could face in so many directions at once. Where is the priority? Where is the focus? And if there is no clarity around which everyone in your business can agree and if the same words are being used but to mean different things, well that is just a recipe for chaos.

Maybe there is no standard definition of customer centricity; maybe as a phrase it’s too glib. Maybe the flavour of customer centricity your business chooses is dependent on the business model, the market category, the strengths and capabilities of your business.

I know many of you will by now be waiting with bated breath for Cicero’s well thought out analysis and definition. As someone far more eloquent than even I once so succinctly put it, it's time to ‘stop doing dumb things to our customers’. Maybe it is that simple. Maybe true customer centricity comes from a top to bottom focus on fixing things that drive customers away. Or as Cicero has said many times before, it’s all about making it easy for customers to do business with us.

Is it only me?

Cicero had to travel at the weekend on Britain’s fine railway network and I must report that it was a surprisingly pleasant experience. Apart from one thing-the dreaded engineering works which turned a normal one hour trip into a three hour slog involving extra changes and buses.

Now I do understand why our Victorian railway system must be maintained and I do applaud the efforts of the train companies to let me know in advance that my journey was going to be extended and their creativity in getting me to my final destination, but I do think that they have got the engineering works thing the wrong way round. And so in an effort to be helpful Cicero has looked at the problem commercially.

It is traditional for engineering works to be done at the weekend to minimise disruption. But weekend travel is largely for leisure traffic and the spend discretionary. Weekday travel is largely commuter based and the journeys necessary. Ergo for train companies to maximise revenue engineering works should be done through the working week hitting commuters who are going to travel by train anyway rather than at weekends where the leisure traffic will find alternative ways to get from A to B.

What do you think? I suspect that this week it is only me thinking like this.

Have a great week

Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.