Customer Centricity
What?
Customer centricity begins with an insight and ends with an experience. The journey in between is about organisations changing their thinking and ways of working.
Why?
Everyone is aiming to be customer centric. Only few will succeed.
78 % of the largest companies in Finland state that customer centricity is one of their strategy corner stones. However, only 29 % of organisations have enough resources and investment to make the change. Only 8 % are real pioneers.
Customers' expectations are changing faster than companies are developing. Organisations that do not understand their customers needs, motives and expectations, will face competitors taking over their businesses.
It is however possible to gain advantage with customer centricity.
The value chain has changed
The world has shifted from a production economy to service economy. Future stars aim to a human and planet centric economy. It is all clear on paper. Yet many struggle even with their first steps: insights and data.
The customer has changed.
The customer you used to know, does not exist anymore. The values, motives, needs and expectations of customers are changing rapidly – not to mention their purchase power.
State of Customer Centricity research
Customer centricity maturity model
The maturity model includes 31 actions organisations have to take on their journey towards customer centricity. The model describes customer centricity in three topics: strategy, culture, and experience. These are evaluated through the lenses of leadership and insight.
Read more below and download the research report.
The research included views from 413 business leader respondents in 2021, and 273 respondents in 2019.
7 %
Only few organisations have a shared language for discussing customers, their needs and motives. Without a shared language, the customer will remain only a statement on a strategy paper and true customer centric culture fails to arise.
49 %
Only half of the organisations know what matters to the customer. Even if 63 % of respondents feel that their value proposition describes how perceived value is provided for the customer, only half of them really understand what customers value or perceive as good.
How?
Customer centricity is always a systematic change journey.
Our statements for the journey:
1. Audit your organization. Build a roadmap for the change journey.
2. Bring deep human insight into strategy. Ensure sufficient investments and tools.
3. Lead the cultural change. Create a shared language for talking about customers.
4. Understand needs, motives and emotions. Aim for continuous skin contact.
References – journeys to customer centricity
Case WSOY: customer centric operating model
The goal of the cooperation was to help WSOY on the path towards consumer insight and stronger data deployment. WSOY has been a pioneer in its industry, but the accelerating change in the operating environment and consumer behaviour has increased the need to extensively understand the current and future needs of consumers; in other words, to place the consumer at the centre of its operations.
Case Humana: brand strategy to unify culture
Swedish-owned Humana, that operates in the social and care sector, has obtained significant foothold in Finland through acquisitions. Now the goal is to bring all companies together, create one common Humana culture and thus take a step to the next level.
Stories on customer-centricity (podcasts in Finnish)
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