Measuring Customer Centricity
by Mike Trotter
Executive Director, Center for Customer Driven Quality
Purdue University
 
Definition
Customer Centricity: The customer is the heart of your business. The convergence of all company resources on the customer experience.
 
Examples and Metrics:
 
1. Customers drive your processes, policies, products and people to all be focused on insuring that any outcome is being created in support of meeting a customer’s needs, demands or expectations. Possible metrics:
a) How many times has customer input resulted in new policies?
b) How often do you gather customer input on how well a key process is working?
c) How often do you gather customer input to design the next generation of product?
d) Do you survey the customers on how well the website is serving their needs?
2.The company places itself in the customer’s circumstances in order to design its products, services and processes. Possible metrics:
a) How often does company leadership use the existing processes to see how they are working for a customer?
b) How often does company leadership observe the employees using processes in serving and selling to customers?
3. The company has a proactive approach to engaging, listening and responding to customers. Possible metric:
a) How often does the company reach out and contact longtime customers, customers with multiple company products or customers who have consistently demonstrated loyalty by referring others? ( Does the company even know which customers would fit into these various categories of customers?)
4. The customer-centric company attracts the customer to their products and services by offering an experience that the customer desires. Possible metric:
a) Does the company ask the new customer, using a sincere approach, why they chose to do business with the company?