FEATURE14 July 2016

Extreme business

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‘Customer focus’ is happily bandied about by business leaders, while customers are less convinced. It’s time to adopt some extreme principles, says Professor Steven Van Belleghem

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The word ‘extremism’ now has such negative connotations. When we hear about extremism in politics or religion in the media,  it is all too often associated with some of the world’s biggest problems. But,  when it comes to the future of relationships between firms and customers, extremism is increasingly necessary.

If I were to ask a room of 100 business leaders whether they thought their business was ‘customer-focused’ I’d be very surprised if the vast majority didn’t agree. In my recent research, 80% of CEOs claimed their company was customer-focused. Why is it then, that only 8% of customers believed that firms they buy from are customer-focused?

A recent study by McKinsey showed that the difference between being ‘customer-focused’ and having an ‘extreme customer focus’ is not down to the channels or products – these are the basics that everyone would hope they get right – the extremism is between the channels. You can suss out whether a company is extremely customer-focused when things go wrong – in the little details, ...