Customer centricity is gaining popularity as the dominant logic of a company. In this context, it is surprising that only very few measurement models exist to measure the perception of customer centricity from the customer’s point of view. However, the analysis of customer centricity requires constant feedback from customers so that the right levers can be applied.
The book Customer Centricity comprehensively discusses the existing approaches and measurement models on this topic. The Customer Centricity Canvas also helps managers to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their own company’s customer orientation.
Kassemeier et al. have also addressed the issue of customer centricity. They conclude that the analysis of customer centricity should include the perception of the company but also the perception of the behavior of the customer contact employees. The behavior of customer contact employees is based on Customer-centric Commitment and is called Customer-centric Citizenship Behav ior. It must be taken into account that the behavior of customer contact employees can be strongly influenced not only by their attitude but also by the behavior of colleagues without customer contact. Kassemeier et al. can demonstrate that, for the analysis of the strength of customer centricity from the customer’s point of view, the company and the customer contact employees must be considered as two independent dimensions. In addition, their study once again proves that customer centricity has a major influence on a company’s growth and profit development.
However, their comments also make it clear that previous work has given far too little thought to the transformation of the organization and that customer centricity is mistakenly equated with customer experience management or CRM. They shorten customer centricity in their explanations to the structure and information technologies. This shows that although customer centricity is on everyone’s lips and there is a growing awareness that analyzing customer centricity is an important success factor, the respective measurement models lack conceptual depth. Especially the understanding regarding the organizational prerequisite seems to be insufficient.
The following article helps to provide an overview of the research efforts to date on the topic of customer centricity and clearly demonstrates that we are still in the early stages of accurately understanding this construct and the impact relationships.
