Customer-centricity – Customer Closeness

In my last blog I talked about Amazon’s mission which is “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company” and pointed out that it’s unsurprising therefore that the single most important thing Amazon focus on is Customer Obsession.

It’s what we help our customers do all time. Only today I was talking to a client who said ‘now that we understand what our customers need from us, our brand is really clear’. Our work with them had made them realise that they had been positioning themselves off the competition and failing to see that the real opportunity was that the whole industry wasn’t meeting customers’ needs.

However, I also love two other behaviours that Amazon require from their leaders:

• Learn and Be Curious - Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them

• Be Right, A Lot - Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs

For us, these are also important. Where we run on-going Closeness programs with our clients these are the two behaviours that we are constantly trying to develop and nurture.

In fact, one of our programs has been created with the objective of creating a culture of curiosity while another, deliberately, on a monthly basis pulls in diverse perspectives that challenge entrenched views. The former has led to a double-digit increase in the performance of innovations and communication and the latter has led to the identification of at least 2 new opportunities being identified that have led to double digit growth in market share.

Driving profit from exploring the win:win of customer centricity: customer obsession, constant curiosity, diverse perspectives.