Analysis of the newly released Wall Street Journal Management Top 250 (the Drucker Institute’s second annual ranking of best-managed companies) suggests that the possible secret sauce of seven companies that do everything well is… (drumroll) a customer-centric focus.
Those seven companies: Apple Inc., Intel Corp., Accenture PLC, Proctor & Gamble Co., 3M Co., Nike Inc. and Edwards Lifesciences Corp., while they aren’t the seven highest-ranked companies overall, are the only ones that scored one standard deviation or more above the mean in all five categories – customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility, and financial strength – among the hundreds of companies examined by the Drucker Institute.
According to the WSJ article, “Of the five categories, it was customer satisfaction where these management all-stars most differentiated themselves as a group in comparison with the scores of the top 20 companies overall.”
So what do these companies do to demonstrate customer-centricity?
- At 3M, a scientist embedded in a hospital noticed that nurses frequently removed bandages to inspect patients’ wounds. The observation prompted 3M to develop transparent medical dressings.
- Proctor & Gamble schedules home visits to watch customers shave, a process that helps P&G better address the subtle, unexpressed needs of the customer that wouldn’t be captured in regular focus groups.
- Medical-device maker Edwards Lifesciences invites patients to meet the teams that produced the implants that helped to restore their physical well-being and quality of life, thus reinforcing the purpose of their work.
Learn from the best. Consider ways that your organization – big or small – can practice putting the customer at the center of your business. Be intentional about finding ways to engage customers in a dialogue about the products or services that you offer. Challenge assumptions and the status quo by, for instance, inviting customers to attend on-site design-thinking workshops.
Doing so will demonstrate that you truly value your customer’s input and may lead to product and service innovations that would have been unknown and unknowable without a customer-centric approach.
