The Customer Copernicus - Preview

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INTRODUC TION

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frequently say (and often believe) they are customer-led when in fact they are not. With further modelling 12 it became clear that executives pursue one of two overall approaches, or sets of beliefs, in their quest for competitive superiority – an effciency approach or a customer value approach. The analysis also showed that only the customer-value approach is posi- tively associated with superior competitive performance. So, this reinforces the need to understand what’s going on – being customer-led seems to make things better for businesses, not just for the customers they serve. These models also showed ways in which customer-led companies are different. They have an employee focus on customer-value creation, have a shared understanding of their key customers, make an effort to satisfy clearly identifed customer segments, are good at bringing customer prop- ositions to the market, and they have a high level of employee engage- ment. Crucially, and maybe less intuitively, they are also ‘focused on the numbers.’ The group believing in the effciency route to success, while still declar- ing customers to be one of their top three priorities, did not experience superior business performance. Being customer-led is rewarding, it delivers results for all kinds of com- panies from all kinds of industries – from retail to telecoms, fnancial ser- vices and media – and because it is far from commonplace, it represents an opportunity. It is interesting because it runs against the natural order of things, and it is truly challenging to implement and – as Zook and Allen explain – sustain against the inevitable pressures that come with success. The erosion of the insurgent beliefs – Zook and Allen’s equivalent of our outside-in beliefs – is what usually follows. 13 To help management teams understand the challenge of becoming cus- tomer-led and to help them take concrete steps to transform their busi- nesses, The Customer Copernicus is organised around insights derived from our decades of practice and research in this area. Chapter 1 explains why being customer-led matters by telling a story about the whole customer-led journey through the example of Tesco, from being inside-out to achieving rare success by becoming resolutely customer-led and outside-in through a series of Moments of Belief. It shows how this leads to growth in a core market, broadens to new markets, then eventually to a natural weakening of customer-led resolve and the loss of

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