When I was a child, my parents who tried to take a good care of me and my brother were trying to take us to experience the nature a lot. One of our joint family activities, especially during early autumn were trips to the woods to enjoy mushroom picking. I guess it was less about mushrooms and more about spending couple of hours together in a quiet and beautiful surroundings. However when it comes to the mushrooms – I’ve learn from them that not every mushroom is a healthy one, that you need to know how and where to spot the specific types, what time of the year and type of the woods is good for one type and not as friendly for another one and that normally when you spot one mushroom – try to look around for more as they normally grow in pairs…

It is very much the same about Customer-Centricity, which is as I have said not exactly the same as to deliver the same outstanding experience to every single customer of yours.

One should really spend a lot of time first to understand:

• Who are the right (healthy) customers for the business?
• How to identify them in 3-4 most important verticals?
• How do they create the value in those verticals?
• What are the distinctive personas to understand?
• How to cluster them so you can scale up at some point?
• Etc.

Customer-Centricity is not only about delivering outstanding experience to strategically selected Customers – it is very much about enabling value creation for the customer.

That is so important that instead of trumpeting around how customer-centric your company is – you really focus on those verticals, customer types and personas you are able to analyze as deeply as possible, so they understand how we do help them to create extra value. As Customer- Centricity is not (at its core) about how many customers your business is able to sell your product to – it is much more about with what and how many right customers your business will stay for a long-time, enabling you to place more solutions by the customers.

• Select your customers wisely.
• Understand how they create the value.
• Develop them solutions they need(very different to what they want).
• Set objectives and goals
• Make individuals responsible
• Communicate tirelessly
• Monitor closely and often the progress made.
• Focus on Customer Life-Time Value, the key to sustainable business growth!

Customer-Centricity is not a sprint race – it is a marathon run! Realize this!