The Customer Copernicus - Preview

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INTRODUC TION

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Whereas today we take the solar system as a given, Nicolaus Copernicus’ thesis that the Earth and the other planets orbited the Sun rather than it all being centred on the Earth was met with incredulity. It went against not just popular belief but also the Church. Such was the scale of this issue that he diplomatically dedicated the book he had written to set out his ideas – De revolutionibus orbium coelestium – to Pope Paul III, and he also added a note that acknowledged the book’s theory was unusual and proposed that if it helped astronomers with their calculations, then it perhaps did not matter whether the theory behind it was really true. When and whether a customer-led, outside-in belief system will ever decisively replace the prevailing inside-out shareholder-frst set of beliefs is impossible to know. Our aim though in publishing The Customer Copernicus is to support this movement, embracing this Copernican shift and taking the conversation up another step. We want to show how to create a truly customer-led business, a business that sees the customer as central and itself on the periphery from the customer’s perspective. We explain why this is a good perspective to hold, what the pitfalls are with adopting it and how to avoid them. Creating and maintaining outside-in beliefs is a signifcant challenge because the default is the opposite – to be guided by what we call inside- out beliefs. Inside-out beliefs mean putting the classic metrics like sales growth, market share and proftability of the business frst, prioritising hit- ting sales targets and obsessing over short-term proftability as the driving motivation. We have learned that the ONLY thing that changes a business from being inside-out to outside-in is a succession of what we call ‘Moments of Belief.’ These are specifc, bold, customer-led initiatives or decisions that on the surface look costly and risky. The expenditure needed is clear, the value to the customer is clear, but the immediate beneft to the business is not. In many conventional businesses to press ahead would appear naively opti- mistic. It turns out, however, that when the initiative is taken, it benefts the business signifcantly too. It signals to the organisation that this kind of action can work well commercially, well enough to sustain a healthy busi- ness, and that ‘this is the way we do things around here,’ this is what we believe, this is crucially what customer-led success looks like . Timpson has just such a succession of Moments of Belief – tangible ways of doing things that challenge conventional wisdom and yet work very