Improve customer centricity systematically to push into new dimensions.
Bring the potential for improving customer centricity compactly onto a single sheet of paper. Can't be done, you say? With the Customer Centricity Canvas (CCC for short), you focus on the essential elements and can thereby improve your customer centricity systematically. The framework was published in the Customer Centricity book. Since then, it has enjoyed great popularity for analysing and improving customer centricity.
Every company is well advised to improve its customer centricity if profit and growth are to be increased continuously. The Customer Centricity Canvas helps to bring all the essential elements of customer centricity into an understandable system. Against the backdrop of usually several optimisation opportunities, you can quickly compare different options for improving customer centricity.
If growth and profit are an important motivation for your daily work. This book helps you to …
The abstract term “customer centricity” is given a concrete organising framework
The structure of the CCC is very simple
Because of its size, everyone involved is forced to “get to the point”
Determine the potential for improving customer centricity on a single page
You recognise dependencies better
Share your assessment with others
Prioritise the different opportunities and secure a clear focus in the transformation
The CCC is a universal tool for the structured analysis of a company's customer centricity. It is suitable as a tool for the following example tasks:
- Discuss potential for improving customer centricity
- Develop different transformation approaches for improving customer centricity
- Shape your company’s digital transformation in a customer-centric way
- Establish and strengthen customer centricity as a “guiding principle” in your company
The CCC is always suitable as a method when several people in a room need a shared understanding of how to improve customer centricity.
To work with the CCC, you should make the following preparations:
- Preliminary evaluation of your company’s customer centricity with the Customer Centricity Maturity Check
- Sticky notes, pens
- CCC template in DIN A0, A1 or A2 (Download)
- Surfaces / walls to hang up the canvas
- 3–4 hours of time
If you plan to use it in larger groups, e.g. as part of a workshop, it is advisable to bring in a facilitator. They can help you take on new perspectives and structure the work better. However, you can also learn the basic mechanics of the CCC yourself.
The Customer Centricity Canvas divides customer centricity into four building blocks. At the core of the CCC is value generation (co-creation) with the customer. The left side shows what conditions are needed in the company to create value for the customer and the company. The right side of the CCC, by contrast, documents how customer management is to be optimised in order to increase profit and growth.
Customer centricity is based on a deep understanding of customers' needs and their value to the company. This understanding needs to be condensed into a customer-value model. In addition, the existing decision processes and decisions need to be analysed to see whether the customer-value analyses are actually used for the respective decisions. In this area, the potential to align decisions better with customer value is determined. The following questions help you determine potential:
- Do we have valuable customer insights that help us differentiate from the competition?
- Which customer insights should we additionally gain?
- How can we improve our customer-value model?
- How can we optimise our decision processes?
- Which decisions should be aligned more strongly with customer value?
The customer-value model is one of the central success factors for improving customer centricity. It requires valuable customer insights, and the analysis results should be used in as many decisions as possible.
In most companies, customer centricity is misunderstood, reduced to customer management or even just customer experience management. Improving customer centricity requires the company to adapt to changes in customers' purchasing behaviour. A company's adaptability (responsiveness) is another important success factor for improving customer centricity. In this area, the potential for which elements of the company are to be transformed is determined. The following questions help you determine potential:
- How can employees’ attitudes and behaviour be aligned more strongly with the customer?
- How should leadership and culture be adapted so that customer centricity is strengthened as a guiding principle in the company?
- Which competencies are missing in the company to improve customer centricity?
- How should structure and processes be changed to strengthen customer centricity?
- How can the company’s network help to improve its own customer centricity?
- What needs to be changed in the IT infrastructure and IT systems to increase customer centricity?
Before customer management is adapted, the respective areas in the company must always be transformed first. In this area, you are required, through strict prioritisation, to reach a shared understanding of what needs to be transformed in the company in order to improve customer centricity.
Value only ever arises through the customer's use of offerings. Customer-centric companies therefore try to integrate the customer into value creation as strongly as possible. The extent of co-creation is another success factor for improving customer centricity. In this area, the potential for how the customer can be integrated more strongly into the creation and marketing of services is determined. The following questions help you determine potential:
- How can co-creation be used more strongly for offering design?
- How can co-creation be used more strongly for producing the offering?
- How can co-creation be used more strongly for selling the offering?
- How can co-creation be used more strongly for the support of other customers?
Customer-centric companies do not see themselves as the value creator, but the customer. It is therefore important to continuously determine the potential for how co-creation can be increased in the company across the four dimensions.
Customer management is very often wrongly equated with customer centricity. But before customer management can be improved, the existing potential in the other three areas must be realised. Value creation — in the sense of growth and profit in customer-relationship management — only occurs once the company has been transformed successfully. In this area, the potential for how the value of the customer relationship is improved, for both the customer and the company, is determined. The following questions help you determine potential:
- What should we change about the business model?
- What should we adjust in the go-to-market strategy?
- Does the brand positioning need to be changed?
- How is customer-relationship management to be improved?
- How can the customer experience be optimised?
- How should the configuration of the 4 Ps be changed?
Acquiring a new customer is many times more expensive than getting an existing customer to buy again. This requires your customer management to be optimally aligned and that you have invested in the right customer relationships. Customer management is thus the outwardly noticeable part of your efforts to improve customer centricity.
The Customer Centricity Canvas is a very effective tool for discussing the potential for improving customer centricity simply, visually and systematically. The greater added value lies in teams gaining a shared language and understanding of the importance of individual elements. In the discussions, every participant also becomes aware that customer centricity is a system in which all blocks build on one another and are interdependent. This is why the CCC is a great tool for planning a company's (digital) transformation.
Good luck!
