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How Do You Define "Customer-Focused Strategy?"
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ArchivesAs the person responsible for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in my six-state division of the American Cancer Society, I’m leading an interdepartmental team through a process to create a 3-year CRM strategic plan. Or I should say, they’re leading me because we had a truly awesome two-day planning session at the end of April where we came up with a draft plan.
However, since then, I’ve learned that people define “customer-focused strategy” and “customer-focused culture” to mean different things. I realized I needed to come up with a definition of each since failure to provide clarity at this foundational level could make the plan more difficult to implement.
Last Friday I reached out to some of my fellow customer service bloggers and posed this question: How do you define “customer-focused strategy?”
Service Untitled immediately rose to the challenge publishing a post the same day and a follow up post yesterday. He wrote:
Most simply, I would define “customer-focused strategy” as a view on business that puts customers at the center of business decisions.
At the same time I posed the question internally within my organization. One response that I received was:
- Focusing planning efforts around priority customer segments instead of an activity or project
- A strategy that focuses on maximizing involvement of a customer group, not an activity or project
Maria, at Customers Are Always agreed with Service Untitled and pointed out that Zappos is a great example of a customer-focused company.
Meikah at CustServ accurately pointed out that, for a strategy to be customer-focused, it must reflect the voice of the customer. She also clued me into a Webinar by Bob Thompson of CustomerThink (formerly CRMGuru.com)
Meikah also related an example of a strategy that wasn’t customer-focused.
In the hope of giving what customers want, Burger King positioned itself to be the best-grilled burger joint in the country. So they did, or so they thought. They were excited about their yummy grilled burgers. But to their surprise, their sales were not picking up. When they investigated, they found out that most customers of burger chains wanted a toy to go with their burger meal.
Bob Thompson would call that a “product-focused strategy.”
Meanwhile, I was reading other CRM blogs and Web sites although, by and large, I was disappointed with them. (Exceptions: PGreenblog and CustomerThink.com.) Paul Greenberg (who writes PGreenblog) wrote CRM At The Speed Of Light, 3ed, which was very helpful.
Based on the input from these and others, I tried to create a succinct definition of “customer-focused strategy” that incorporated their various points. Several sheets of scratch paper later, here’s what I call version 1.0:
Customer-Focused Strategy—A plan that emphasizes the needs of a particular customer segment over that of the organization.
I’m still not 100% satisfied with this definition. I invite your input as well, either as a comment below or in an e-mail to me.
How do you define “customer-focused strategy?”
Regards,
Glenn
Latest Comments
Glenn, I found your blog via Carol's "Customers Rock"... I think this is a great exercise... I wanted to tell you I posted a complimentary entry into my blog, http://evergance.wordpress.com, about this. I spent 7 years at Gartner doing CRM research, and the only thing I saw missing from all the bloggers I read about this topic was to make it a win-win situation. I saw many organizations go down the path to customer-focused strategies, fully committed to doing whatever the customer wanted or needed -- without considering the costs or viability of the solutions implemented. Needless to say, those were short-term initiatives. If both the customer and the organization win something from a customer-focused initiative is a good one... if only the customer does, I don't know many business that can stay alive for long without making money. Anyways, I wanted to say thanks for your entry... nice job on your blog.
Comment By: Esteban Kolsky | 5/16/08 at 9:50 AM How Do You Define "Customer-Focused Strategy?"When we as owners and operators of buisnesses learn that it takes the customer to get us where we are going and it is them same people that brought where we came from with their money and time, we will then learn that without them we have no one to serve. You know that SERVE is a part of the word service. If you don't like your job of serving people maybe you should get out of the buisness. I am a customer when I enter someone else establishment and i like being served, I feel I pay for it ...
Comment By: Cynthia Fortenberry | 7/15/08 at 9:59 AM How Do You Define "Customer-Focused Strategy?"When we as owners and operators of buisnesses learn that it takes the customer to get us where we are going and it is them same people that brought where we came from with their money and time, we will then learn that without them we have no one to serve. You know that SERVE is a part of the word service. If you don't like your job of serving people maybe you should get out of the buisness. I am a customer when I enter someone else establishment and i like being served, I feel I pay for it ...
Comment By: Cynthia Fortenberry | 7/15/08 at 9:59 AM How Do You Define "Customer-Focused Strategy?"Excellent point about service, Cynthia. Thanks for reading and chiming in.
Comment By: Glenn | 7/21/08 at 7:04 PM How Do You Define "Customer-Focused Strategy?"