A Customer-Centric Enterprise (CCE) is an organisation that has resolved to do business from customers’ perspective. In this kind of organisation, profit is not their main motive of establishing business, they first resolve to satisfy customers’ needs which will in turn generate profits more than they expected. That is why CRM scholars have agreed that it is ten times better to do business from customers’ perspective than from product perspective.

OBJECTIVES OF THIS ARTICLE

At the-end of this article, you should be able to:

· explain what a customer-centric enterprise is;

· explain the stages that an organisation has to pass through before they can become a customer centric enterprise;

· know the reasons why an organisation has to be customer-centric;

· functions and roles of customer-centricity in a customer-centric enterprise; and

· Know the reasons why customer-centricity is the best solution for organisations experiencing customer attrition.

In the word of the Gartner group, they define CRM as an enterprise-wide business strategy designed to optimize profitability revenue and customer satisfaction by organizing the enterprise around customer segments, fostering customer satisfying behaviours and linking processes from customers through suppliers.

In evolving into a customer-centric enterprise, an organisation tries to foster customer behaviours and they also develop business processes that will allow the organisation to do business from customer perspective. Apart from that, they have to come up with technologies that will allow customers to have a total experience irrespective of the channel that they are using to communicate with the organization.

Evolution of Customer-Centric Enterprise

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#1 Product Focused Enterprise

This is the default for many organizations. This is so because the primary purpose of arty organization is to make profit. At this level, all that the organization is concerned with is, how they can increase productivity. The organization here honour their staff based on the volume of sales they were able to make in a given year. You should know that product focused enterprise have much information about their customers but the information are not structured in a way that it can be used to satisfy customers needs.

#2 Customer Focused Enterprise

When an organisation begins with a product centric-vision, situation at times will force them to begin to reckon with their customers. they will now realize that they have to deal with arrays of customer issues which have much to do with the use of their products. The organization will now realize will now realize that if nothing is done about the complaints, it may force them out of business. This at times has forced many organizations to set up call centres in order to attend to customer issues and complaints. The main purpose of doing this was to maximize customer and employees satisfaction.

#3 Customer Value Focused Enterprise

Under this, the organisation tries to minimize the amount being spent on customers that arc not really adding value to the organisation. The organisation tries to concentrate on customers that have larger wallet share with them. Take for example; MTN tries to come up with a programme that rewarded customers that load up to ten thousand naira airtime monthly The company knew that it will be very difficult for a poor man that could not afford to feed three square meal.

The main onus of this is to gather as much information as possible about the customers and to use those information in formulating strategies that will allow the organization to serve their customers in a dynamic way

#4 Customer Centric Enterprise

This is an organization that holds customers at the heart of its business. They see their customers as one of the stakeholders in the organization. In this kind of setting, all policies and actions of the organization are geered towards customer satisfaction and making sure that the brand lives up to expectation.

It should be noted that the CRM initiatives of these enterprises can help reduce costs by encouraging customers to render service to each other in communities of interest, promote the enterprise to like-minded people known to them at low cost, seek redress willingly in the event of a shortcoming, be enterprising in taking up new products, and remain loyal for life.

Need For Customer Centricity

There is the need for organizations to operate from customers’ perspective as this will help them to retain their customers for life. The only reason why profit is coming in the first place is that customers decided to remain with the organization. Once they decide to spend their money somewhere else, profit will cease.

One thing is that customers love to enjoy their liberty, if an organization gives them that, and surpass their expectation in terms of services, there is nothing that will make a customer in his right sense to lock somewhere else.

Mother thing is that if you are satisfying your customers in the right way, you will spend less on promotional offers and adverts as your satisfied customers will do the talking for you. There will be an opportunity to cross-sell as they will gladly accept your new products and offerings and introduce your products to others.

It has also been said that the best way for an organisation to go, is to operate from customers’ perspective. Although this may not be profitable in the first place as you have to spend much in order to gain their trust. Once this is achieved, you can be rest assured that you have had those customers for life.

Functions of Customer Centricity

We have all agreed that customer centricity is the act of doing business from customers’ perspective. There are some basic function that customer centricity are meant to perform.

It is the function of customer centricity to increase the profitability of the organization. If customer-centricity is well managed, it will help the organisation to reduce their cost of production; once you are able to manage your customers, it will reduce the cost that you to spend on acquiring new customers. This will ultimately reduce overhead cost and will also increase the volume/number of your products that your customer uses.

Customer centricity will also increase the bond between you and your customers. It will help you to know the exact number of customers that you have. What are those things your customer need and you can provide those needs. You must be able to know what your customer wants and how to meet those needs. At times, you may need to know the network of people that your customer or prospect have before you can even think of the best way to serve them. Once you are meeting and exceeding their needs, you will be able to sustain the bond between you and your customers.

Customer centricity will also increase customers and employee satisfaction. If customers are not satisfied, they will spend their money elsewhere, this will ultimately lead to loss of jobs and once the money is being spent elsewhere, it will create tension in the mind of staff of your organisation. That is why you have to satisfy your customer, so that your employees too will be happy That is why it is often said that employees’ satisfaction is customer satisfaction.

Customer Centricity: A Systematic Solution

Have you ever wondered why a computer system is called a system? It is a system because there are many components that come together before you can have what is called a system? It is a combination of many subsystems that form what is called a system. In a computer system, you have the application software like your MS Word, Microsoft Excel, Corel Draw, among others. We also have the keyboard, mouse, UPS among others.

You would have been wondering, how then can we relate a computer system to a customer centric enterprise. Many organizations today in Nigeria have closed down because customers are no longer patronizing their organisation.

They have spent a lot of their hard-earned money on promotional offers such as: Be a millionaire promo, 180 cars in 180 days among others. This is not really necessary when you have a customer-centric enterprise in place. It is a policy that will allow you to do business from customers’ perspective. You will have to consciously examine and discover some facts about your customers and you will use that knowledge to decide on what to produce, how to produce and for whom to produce.

We called customer-centric enterprise a system because it is a combination of many parts that come together to become one. You can leave one step aside and move to the other, and you are still expecting the same result.

You should know that in evolving into a customer-centric enterprise, you have to make up your mind that you want to operate from customers’ perspective. This will be backed-up with technology that is meant to ensure that your dream is realized. You need to practically learn how you can consciously satisfy your customers’ needs. This will help your business

SUMMARY

In this article, we have discovered that:

A customer-centric enterprise is an organization that is doing business from customers’ perspective.
There are four evolutions of a customer-centric enterprise, which are: Product Focused Enterprise, Customer Focused Enterprise, Customer Value Focused Enterprise and Customer Centric Enterprise which has much to do with 36O⁰ view of customers.
We have also observed that customer-centric enterprise will help you to retain your customers for life. It will also ensure that both your customers and your staff derive maximum satisfaction.

Brainstorming Session

Use the diagram in fig. 11 to discuss what CCE evolution is.
Do you agree that organisations should treat different customers differently?
Do you think that organizations should waste their time on non profitable customers?

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Action Point

PS: I know you might agree with some of the points that I have raised in this article. You might not agree with some of the issues raised. Let me know your views about the topic discussed. We will appreciate it if you could drop your comment. Thanks in anticipation.

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