Is customer centric transformation still working?

For years, organisations have invested in becoming more customer-centric. They established customer offices, built CX teams, and gave design a mandate to be human-centred, with real investment in research, user needs, and understanding. They hired insight teams, built design capabilities, and deployed powerful new technology. 

From leadership commitment to KPIs reflecting customer outcomes, we have seen many initiatives to obtain that outside-in perspective; sensing, innovating, and adapting based on customer needs. And yet, even in organisations widely held up as examples of good practice, something doesn’t quite land. Programmes deliver outputs, but the organisation itself rarely ends up more customer-centric than before. 

The question is: is that a bad thing? Is becoming a truly customer centric (or customer obsessed (coined by Forrester)) organisation really the right purpose? Let’s ask ourselves this question.

The question we need to ask ourselves

If we zoom out, a fundamental, underlying question to ask is the following: Why does customer-centric transformation stall, dilute, or quietly revert once the consultants leave or the programme winds down? Not because people lack commitment or good tools, but because something more structural seems to be at play.

An initial diagnosis

Although customer centricity is an organisation-wide purpose, we often see different, even competing priorities within organisations. While Marketing focuses on deepening and personalising relationships with customers, Sales prioritises revenue growth and deal closure, and while Product strives to solve customer problems through feature innovation, Customer Service aims to improve frontline customer interactions. Looking across the disciplines usually tasked with the work, each seems to carry its own theory of change, prioritisation, metrics and customer focus, as well as its own blind spots.

Questioning the goal itself

Perhaps the deeper issue is the goal organisations set. Is full customer-centricity realistic, or even desirable? An organisation entirely oriented around the customer was always a stretch for most business models, so why aim for that? As shared before, most organisations balance multiple, often competing priorities, and the customer is one voice among several legitimate ones. Perhaps the aim isn’t to make the organisation customer-centric, but to make the customer perspective a normal, permanent, and legitimate part of how the organisation makes decisions. Not an alien voice pushing an agenda from outside, but a recognised part of the conversation, alongside finance, operations, and everything else an organisation has to balance.

Let’s find some answers. Where do you agree, and where you don’t? All thoughts (and experiences!) are welcome.