The Customer Copernicus - Preview

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INTRODUC TION

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it to spread. Cutting keys emerged as a strong complementary offer – when they put keys in the window, stores sold more. But the key to the business’s exceptional customer-led growth was less literal – it was John Timpson’s realisation that success depended on the way they served their customers. The people working at the front-of-house counter and the relationships they built fed the shoe repair and key-cutting business. The next realisation was that Timpson could make this customer service exceptional. In 1998, the business made a decisive change and introduced ‘upside-down management,’ which it borrowed from Nordstrom. This meant the business had to do three things: 1. Find exceptional, friendly people to work in its stores. 2. Give them complete freedom to do what they feel is right for customers. 3. Support them in every possible way so they can be at their best. These words are easy to say but acting on them goes against all sorts of conventional business wisdom. How did Timpson make such an unlikely recipe work so well across a national business? The critical component in being customer-led is a shared, explicit, unambiguous belief that creating customer value in new and better ways is the guiding principle that defnes ‘the way we do things around here.’ This is what we call an outside-in belief system – one that takes a perspec- tive that starts outside the business – with customers – and looks back in to work out how the business might respond. As Zook and Allen explain in The Founder’s Mentality , this is not uncommon among early stage companies. Incredibly focused, they behave as insurgents, leading the charge on an industry on behalf of customers, minimising bureaucracy, obsessing about customers and making sure the front line has every possible support to serve them in new and better ways. 3 The corollary is inside-out, starting with you and what matters to your business then pushing it onto the outside world. Inside-out perspectives are common; outside-in perspectives and beliefs are, unsurprisingly, rare. ‘Unsurprisingly’ because it is clear the dominant paradigm has been that of the ‘shareholder frst.’ Ever since Jensen and Meckling’s much cited rebuke of managerial capitalism and promotion of shareholder value capitalism,