Customer/client/user centricity points to a political orientation that most organizations can’t genuinely commit to. In the gray area of its application lies power and politics, not expertise and empathy.
Customer-centric. Client-centric. User-centric.
Those notions are NOT of a technical orientation. They may provide technical values but they’re not technical committments.
Those are of a political orientation. They’re political committments:
- In the private sector, organizations are fundamentally centric to shareholders, investors, sponsors, and even executives. Customer-centric is good only as far as it benefits the organizaiton. The question is: would they really do something that benefits their customers at the sacrifice of their own bottom line? That’s where their true centricity reveals itself.
- In the public sector, organizations are fundamentally centric to politics and institutions, and–in turn–politicians. Client-centric is good only as far as it benefits the institutional agenda. The question is: would they really do something that benefits their clients and the public at the sacrifice of their own bottom line? That’s where their true centricity reveals itself.
A political orientation demands clarity on effective and efficient accountability and oversight:
- Where do we draw the line between meeting where customers/clients/users are and meeting where the organization is? Why?
- Who defines the criteria we use for that decision? Why?
- What is considered good enough? Why?
- How much centric is centric enough? Who gets to decide on that? Why?
- How do we resolve the conflict between the interest of the people and that of the organizaiton when it arises? Why?
Customer/client/user centricity points to a political orientation that most organizations can’t genuinely commit to. In the gray area of its application lies power and politics, not expertise and empathy.
Where do we draw the line between meeting where our customers/clients/users are and meeting where our organization is?
If the answer is wherever it happens to be politically or financially convenient, then there’s no real centricity to anything here. It’s just relativism, pragmatism and utilitarianism.
In other words, it’s just non-committing rhetorics:
I’ll give you anything you ask for – as long as it’s not something I don’t want to give.
Love Actually
Customer/client/user centricity is either an ideal or not an ideal. If an ideal is something that only people in power can validate, then I’m not sure it is an actual ideal and I’m not even sure that it’s anything worthy of our pursuit.
Maybe it’s time for us to stop singing the praises of customer/client/user centricity and, instead, start thinking about what kind of accountability and oversight systems can better afford the goals we all want to achieve: meeting people where they are, both in the organizaitons and in the world.
Noah Fang 