Retail TouchPoints: What Does Customer-Centricity Mean?

Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the Retail TouchPoints website.

To Robert (Bob) Willett, the retired CIO of Best Buy, true customer-centricity certainly involves technology but also providing store associates with the freedom to reach service excellence.

"There are some retailers and service providers who stick religiously to a standard operating procedure and employees have very defined roles," says Mr. Willett, who also had held the title of CEO of Best Buy’s international division and is a former global managing partner at Accenture.

He adds, "That doesn’t leave much room for employees to meet the needs of customers. To be customer-centric, in my view, an organization has to stretch in terms of exceeding customer expectations both through behavior and technology."

Among the retailers he sees as particularly customer-centric are Zara, Apple, Nordstrom and British retailer John Lewis.

"(John Lewis) employees go out of their way for their customers and the employees have a stake in the retailer’s success," said Mr. Willett. "Customers know that John Lewis is not going to be the least expensive or the most expensive store, but the retailer offers great value and has gained a tremendous amount of trust with shoppers."

In regard to technology, Mr. Willett said a customer-centric organization has to have the tools in place to identify and know more about their prime customers so that a retailer coming in contact with them, whether in store or online, can tailor the response to their needs. Mr. Willett adds, "It is a matter of solutions-based selling versus transaction-oriented selling."

"When a retailer really understands the data and the shoppers, it becomes a much more relevant experience for the consumer," said Mr. Willett. "From the customer’s experience, they are more willing to share information with retailers that can provide solutions for them. Also, encryption and tokenization technologies make it safer to share this data. We’re getting there."

At the end of the day, however, it is not about processes or technology, but about investing in people. Mr. Willett states, "Personal interaction becomes more and more important in a competitive environment. Successful retailers have employees who behave like owners."

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Discussion Questions

What traits make up a customer-centric retailer? How are technological advances changing the customer-centric equation?

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Debbie Hauss
Debbie Hauss
10 years ago

The first step is to think of the customer as the top priority, then all the strategies fall into place. Of course technology is a key element in today’s customer-centric retail marketplace. Retailers must deliver consistent messaging across all touch points. Technology helps to optimize inventory, merchandising and the supply chain. And advanced analytics are helping merchants act, rather than react, in regards to trends and sales glitches.

Max Goldberg
Max Goldberg
10 years ago

Great post. A customer-centric retailer empowers employees to assist consumers. This philosophy becomes part of the retailer’s DNA and is embraced by management.

Technology enables retailers to gather information about consumers and then use it to better the shopping experience, saving consumers time and money. Consumers would come to trust the retailer enough that they would try products recommended by the retailer, believing that the retailer has the customers’ best interests at heart.

Jason Goldberg
Jason Goldberg
10 years ago

To me, customer centricity is about having empathy for the customer and providing what she wants (which may vary widely from shopping mission to shopping mission).

I had a front row seat for Best Buy’s Customer Centricity initiative starting in 2004. At a macro level, the process involved developing personas for its key customers (Barry, Jill, Buzz, Ray, and Best Buy for Business), and going through an elaborate testing process to determine the shopping amenities that were important to each.

In Best Buy’s case, all the winning amenities were remarkably similar. They all wanted a higher level of personal interaction and service. Blackshirt subject matter experts for Barry, Shopping Concierge for Jill, etc.

The challenge is that customer satisfaction is related to expectations. So when Best Buy offered its Jill shoppers a personal concierge, they raised her expectations, and customer satisfaction eroded, if Best Buy couldn’t hire a great employee in that role, or afford to staff it when Jill wanted to shop.

All these big data projects today, follow the same dynamic. If you’re going to ask me for personal information, and collect more about you, I expect you to use it to give me a better experience. If Nordstrom asked me my gender when I signed up for a web-account, then why do they still send me catalogs for woman’s clothing? They raised my expectations with the question, and then fell short with their execution.

David Biernbaum
David Biernbaum
10 years ago

For so many consumers, the employee that services them “is” the store. I totally agree with Bob Willett; what customer-centricity starts with is allowing employees the freedom to give great service.

Gene Detroyer
Gene Detroyer
10 years ago

Customer-centric is not about technology or even service. Customer-centric means understanding that without the customers, there is no retailer. Too many retailers see their customers in an antagonistic light. Too many retailers never say, “if I were the customer here, what would I want?”

The retailer mindset is not how can we serve our customers better, but how can we get them into the store and get them to buy more? That is not customer-centric. That is company-centric.

David Zahn
David Zahn
10 years ago

Some terrific insights above and Jason’s “front-row seat” perspective is very informative. My take on this is that the “touchpoints” concept and being “customer-centric” mean very different things to each of us. So, we are all translating it in a way that aligns with our own understandings.

My view is that the data we are collecting is incomplete in terms of understanding the shopper’s jobs-to-be-done and how the retail ecosystem can support or help fulfill it. Right now, we (as an industry) tend to focus on collecting demographic data, purchase behavior, and product characteristics and then extrapolate intent. If we connect the touchpoints as shown in the diagram here, we will be much closer to getting at true customer-centricity.

Mark Heckman
Mark Heckman
10 years ago

At the risk of being anecdotal about this topic, a recent customer experience with Apple supports Mr. Willett’s contention that human interaction is still very key to best of breed customer service.

While Apple’s technology indeed provided necessary information about my MacPro and its system issues, it was a very well trained and personable technical assistant that patiently worked with me over the phone and online to solve the problem.

The use of trained associates, skilled and empowered in solving customer’s problems will be an increasingly important tenet for businesses, especially those that are now reaching shoppers through multiple channels. Online interactions are inherently more automated and less humanized fostering the opportunity for shopper frustration when problems arise.

While only a few retailers will win on pure “price,” the rest of the market needs to understand the importance of the human-element in their customer service mix, especially as they introduce more and more automation in the purchase process. From my perspective, far too few are making the needed investments in this area.

Gordon Arnold
Gordon Arnold
10 years ago

“At the end of the day” it is about the profit or loss of doing business. If you are not performing in a manner that exudes confidence from both consumer and ownership, it is time for a change. Ownership of high-priced or slow-turn inventory is terminal in the economy in which we live. Customer-centric focus doesn’t pay the bills, sales receipts do.

Shep Hyken
Shep Hyken
10 years ago

The concept of customer-centricity is simple. Everything you do has the customer in mind. With that said, there is much work to do in order to reach that simple and pure goal, which is to be a 100% customer focused (centric) organization.

And, as for advances in technology? Just fall back to the simplistic idea that everything, and that includes advanced technology and sophisticated systems, must always keep the customer in mind. Does any of this make it easier, better, cheaper, higher quality, etc. for the customer? That’s a big part of what customer centricity is about.

Karen S. Herman
Karen S. Herman
10 years ago

A holistic customer-centric approach services the needs of the customer and is not about the immediate sale, but investing in a long-term relationship that will yield far more revenue than the short-term transaction. Companies that put customers first create great brand advocates, that naturally can be measured in sales and lifetime value, but more powerfully as proponents in social media conversations.

Technology can be used to improve and enhance the customer experience, and it should. But customer-centric companies have been around for a 100 years—way before the internet and databases. Retailers need to truly understand their customer’s needs and wants to be customer-centric, not the other way around.

James Tenser
James Tenser
10 years ago

It’s true that relating strategies to the single question, “What serves the customer best?” is a bedrock principle.

We’ve also seen that answering that question can be tricky. It takes organizational commitment, active listening, and ultimately a willingness to reconsider some operational priorities.

The persistent belief that retailers can meet shopper expectations through better training and hiring is something of a fallacy, however. Yes, those values are necessary, but they cannot be sufficient in the absence of winning practices.

Unless associates are enabled with tools and policies that make it possible to succeed on shopper’s behalf, their skills and personal traits won’t be enough. Technology is usually a part of this equation; so is empowerment; so is operational excellence.

Vahe Katros
Vahe Katros
10 years ago

I think it might be helpful to look at customer centricity as an organizational competency that spans a range of levels. But before going through the levels (a linear approach) one needs to acknowledge the non linear. Non-linear qualities relate to culture, empathy, creativity, leadership, humility. It’s a attitude where you really believe you are led by the people you serve. That kind of attitude can trump the technical side but it’s tough to scale and that’s what BBY was and is trying to do—build methods and human and technical capabilities to operationalize ways to reduce friction and increase delight.

So regarding the levels: let’s say that the lowest level retailers are those that are heavy on quant, big data and the further evolved have folks who have backgrounds in design thinking, agile development, qualitative insights management, active customer panels (think Zara, Walmart Mom’s) and who have years of experience thinking this way—so much experience that everything I just said is business as usual.

There are a few companies that have those skills and Best Buy is one of them. They started early with their Personas, worked into behavior segmentation, they invest in human resources relating to managing human centered innovation (imagine that, their insights folks on the services side manage 100s of simultaneous service projects!). Heck they’ve even built cloud-based APIs to support their agile work; in short, they are a best practice firm that has not given up. I hope for more BBYs who try to make this stuff tangible. In the mean time, love is the answer.

Brian Numainville
Brian Numainville
10 years ago

“Successful retailers have employees who behave like owners.” This sentence sums it up. In order to keep customers at the center of the equation, employees must be empowered to satisfy them, whether through the use of technology or good old-fashioned common sense. Empower employees, train them to use good judgement, and put the tools in their hands to help them serve customers.

Ralph Jacobson
Ralph Jacobson
10 years ago

Talk is cheap. The actions of the employees are what the customer remembers. Making the customer feel special is the best way to differentiate and drive true loyalty.

Matthew Keylock
Matthew Keylock
10 years ago

There is a difference between doing “retail” with the customer in mind, and designing your retail business with the customer at the center. For too many retailers “customer” has become an overlay, but the fundamentals of the business still work in a different direction.

Tech can help both approaches, but in my mind only one is customer-centric.