Focus on Customer Centricity Strong but still a Struggle

If nearly all companies surveyed for a study say they have a strategy for doing something, but less that 15 percent say their strategies are successful, there is a disconnect somewhere. Such were the results of a study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Oracle called, “Conquering Convergence: Focusing on the Customer.”

The rise of user-generated content and ongoing convergence of products, companies and customer groups is causing a consumer-pull effect that has service providers scrambling to understand and serve their customers better and more proactively. The survey of 164 executives from across the globe, conducted in July 2007, showed 92 percent of companies have a customer-centric strategy and one-quarter of them feel the technology to help achieve customer centricty is inadequate. Forty-six percent of respondent said they were having trouble even identifying the right technology to achieve their goals.

“The study clearly highlights that the industry is still challenged by fully exploiting a customer centric business,” said Sanjay Mehta, senior director of product strategy at Oracle. “Part of that is because as the industry has evolved and matured, the way we define customer centric businesses has also changed and matured.”

Historically, Mehta said, customer centricity meant having a customer relationship management system (CRM) that provided customer service representatives with a single screen for all customer services. It then evolved to include to the point where service providers began shifting from the “build it and they will come” mindset to actually developing services based on customer demand. Today, being customer centric means reacting to and anticipating customer preferences and usage in near real time.

As a result of the difficulties executing on their strategies, 75 percent of businesses are working with external partners such as consultants to develop a customer-focus strategy.

Of the 46 percent relying on customer relationship management technology and the 22 percent who rely on other analytics software, only 6 percent rate their solutions as excellent. The main cause (41 percent) of this poor performance is incomplete customer data. Thirty-two percent complain of the lack of clarity in deciding which data to measure.

Only one in four respondents said they have predictive customer-buying models. And the vaunted 360-degree view of the customer has not been realized by more than two-third of companies and only 39 percent even believe they have a good scorecard for measuring customer focus.