Do you really put the customer first? Here at Liquid Consulting we certainly do!!
Have you ever heard an executive say, “Don’t steal our customers”?
This implies that somehow a company can “own” people who have a mind of their own.
To be truly customer-centric, you sometimes have to do things that are more in the customer’s interests than your own. For example, if a valuable customer needs service within five days—rather than the ten days that might be more convenient for you—then the right thing to do is to meet the customer’s deadline.
This sometimes means subcontracting work to others, hiring additional talent faster than you expected, or even (gasp!) referring your customer to another firm.
In my experience, going the extra distance for your customer nearly always pays off in the long run, even if it hurts in the short run.
But above all, you should never forget that your company’s customers do not “belong” to you. No one thinks of themselves first and foremost as a customer; we all have free will and unique needs. The word “customer” is most commonly used within a firm to describe the people who are paying for a product or service, but those people seldom would use that word themselves.
Being customer-centric is hard. Only companies that understand this fact have the slightest chance of actually being customer-centric.
