Lot's of companies hear me or others talk about customer centricity and say,
man that's great, I wish we could do a strategy like that but we can't.
We either don't have the data, we might not have the analytical capabilities.
We might not have the technology to allow us to serve up different kinds of products
or services to our customers.
Or maybe there's regulatory restrictions that prevent us from doing it even if we
think we're able to.
And so rather than just having those companies walk away, and saying,
well, it's not for us.
I've had some very interesting experiences with companies from around a variety of
different industries, one of which was a pharmaceutical company and
another one was Google.
Okay, two companies that might have the capabilities to treat customers
differently, but they're really hesitant to do so.
So in these cases, and in others, one of the big wins of customer centricity has
been for these companies not so much to be customer centric with their own customers,
but to teach their customers how to be customer centric with their customers.
So I've had lots of good conversations with these organizations and others.
Basically they're listening very attentively, and I'm going through all
these lessons about what customer centricity is and all the strategies and
tactics and everything else that we've been covering in the course.
And they're carefully taking notes,
not because they're going to do this stuff themselves, but here's their thinking.
If we can teach our customers how to be more customer centric,
then they will see us as a trusted advisor.
Then they will become better customers as of us.
They will be more locked in.
In the case of Google, if they can teach their advertiser clients how to be more
customer centric, then those advertiser clients will be better consumers of,
they will buy more, Google analytics products, for instance.
So in many cases the idea of customer centricity isn't necessarily something
that you do with your own customers, or
it's not something that you do only with your customers.
But in a B to B setting you are also going to teach your customers how to do these
things with their customers.
Pay it forward.
And I just love this idea because not only is it effective
from a business standpoint.
Not only is it consistent with everything we say about customer centricity,
the whole idea about making these investments and we're in it for
the long run, we're not just trying to make a dollar right now.
But the more that you can get others to be basically spreading the gospel for
you, the more it's going legitimize some of these practices.
The more people within your organization who are really going to be able to
understand them and talk about them and just make this conversation more
ubiquitous throughout the entire ecosystem that your company is involved in.
So this is an idea that, really,
I didn't have in mind at all when I was writing my book about customer centricity.
It's one of the things that I've been learning as I go ahead.
And so this idea of paying it forward I think is just one of many extensions of
customer centricity that's food for thought, something to think about.
That might be a nice way for you to apply customer centricity or
to expand it beyond what you've already been thinking about.