Customer-centricity simply speaking means bringing customers at the centre of the enterprise and aligning strategies, decisions and actions to deepen this relationship with them over a period of time. Aligning strategies, decision and actions includes products, distribution, behaviour, business models, talent acquisition and so.

Deepening relationship is about increasing share of wallet and doing repeat business with the company. This holds true whether you are a MSME, SME or large corporate. However, a journey of customer-centricity is easier said than done. For MSME owners, to understand this journey, we must first put in place the foundational elements called the AUDI of customer-centricity: Align, Understand, Define and Inventorise.

A = Align for commitment
Alignment commences with the CEO and top management coming together and deciding to bring customer-centricity from the periphery of an enterprise to being a strategic-choice for achieving the company’s vision.

This is where the team commits to position this as a profit-driven cross-functional effort that encompasses the entire company. They put together a plan to pivot the operating system of the company around deep understanding of the customer and what they want to accomplish. This is followed by top management team going out and communicating to the rest of the organization, why this change effort is the need of the hour and what inputs they have.

An ideal process to follow here is the Japanese process of “catchball” which entails throwing back and forth this strategic idea of a “customer-centric enterprise” till it is developed and agreed upon by all. This entire alignment process can never be done in a short-cut.

Depending on the size of organisation, this can be a fairly long process. For example, when ICICI Lombard embarked on a journey of customer-centricity a couple of years back the initiative was led by the CEO Bhargav Dasgupta. The alignment process began with a top team comprising 60 leaders coming together and deciding that customer-centricity is going to be a key pillar to achieve the vision.

This was followed by a series of interventions to get rest of the employees on board which took a couple of months to complete. As Bhargav told me a couple of months back when I met him: “The heart of a customer-centric enterprise is employee mindsets in an organizational culture”. MSMEs should not think that as their size is small they do not need to do this. They too need to go through an alignment process before rolling out an agenda of Customer Centricity.

U = Understand the Customer Value Proposition
Do you know your customer value proposition? It is not just about the physical attributes or the specifications or what is before your eyes. It is the finer details that connect a product with the customers. A customer value proposition should clarify the benefits that consumers can expect from a product.

A value proposition canvas delineating all these should be drawn and communicated to all in the enterprise. What this does is that not only do employees grasp the value proposition better; they also get an idea about the role they have to play. When employees are not clear about the value proposition, it can have myriad gaps in areas such as design, production, delivery, after sales service etc. Also, customer-centricity is the business of all employees and when they exactly know the customer value proposition, they can communicate to customers if need be and not wait for the marketing team to do so. MSMEs often do not focus on this much. This is something that they need to get right.

D = Define what is the Service Intent
One thing that organizations often struggle with is lack of clarity on what the customer should experience while using the product. Service intent is a short definition of what customers would experience while interacting with the organization across touch-points. It is a statement that stipulates what experience would be delivered to customers.

This should include physical, emotional and experiential components that are easily understood by all. Ideally service intent should be short and easily understood by all. This gives clarity on the type of experience that the organization will deliver.

For example Hotel Ritz Carlton has a motto (they do not call it a Service Intent) which reads “We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen”. W Hotel has two words service intent which is: “Whatever/Whenever” of W Hotel. For Taj Hotels, the service intent is called Tajness and talks about things such as Nobility, Care, Homage to Local Culture, Authenticity, Pioneering Journey and Sensorial Journey.

It is important to have a service intent in a language which the employees understand. For example, when Standard Chartered Bank, Tanazania embarked on a journey to improve customer experience with CEO Sanjay Rughani leading from the front, the top team with employee participation, came up with a service intent called: “Hapa CAS” (CAS stands for Care, Accuracy & Speed) Tuu”. This is partly in Swahili language and means “Here for our Customers” essentially stating that in all touch points customers would experience Care, Accuracy and Speed.

Remember, service intent cannot just be a one-time exercise. As Rughani says: “We at Standard Chartered Bank strive to deliver a quality and fulfilling experience through repeated reinforcement and engagements. The overarching message of service intent has to be repeatedly communicated to our employees so that it becomes a part of their DNA”. For MSMEs, a Service Intent can be a big differentiator. They should use service intent as an overarching mission to embed quality in processes.

I = Inventorise initiatives that matter

Once the leadership alignment is in place and there is clarity on customer value proposition and the service intent, the top management in participation with employees should come up with a laundry list of initiatives that would need to be deployed.

Some of the action items on this list should include clear roadmap, metrics to adopt, expected behaviors, processes to be optimized, technology to be adopted, understanding the customer journey, governance process, change management, positioning, capability assessment, structure, mindsets, analytics etc. This is not a one-time exercise, but something you will keep on listing at regular intervals as the journey progresses and new ideas and needs come up. Remember, customer-centricity is not an end, but a means to reaching the organizational vision. Initiatives and projects will get added as long as the organization focusses on customer loyalty and company’s economics.

So, before you embark on a journey of customer-centricity remember the acronym AUDI which we delineated above. The above learnings can be very effectively applied in MSMEs too. But this is only possible when the CEO takes ownership for the same. One thing that needs to be kept in mind is the CEO and top management can never soften the pedal around customer-centricity.

The writer is a recognisedname in Lean Management & Customer-Centricity and author of eight books. He is a Fellow of American Society of Quality and recipient of 2014 Phil Crosby Medal. He is currently the managing partner at Proliferator Advisory & Consulting.
To know more about him, visit: www.debashissarkar.com