Is Your Business Really About the Customer?

Everyone talks about how customer friendly their business is; the customer is job one or how their business is all about the customer. We would all agree that without the customer you would have no business at all. Yet, who really comes first, the customer or your business?

Your policies will tell you a lot about your relationship with your customer. Let’s look at a few common business policies.

1. Minimum order size Translation: your customer wants to order less but you insist that they order more.
2. Credit Limits. Translation: your customer wants to order more but you are afraid you will not get your money.
3. Two week turnaround. Translation: your customer wants their order now but you think it is not cost effective for you to process their order right now.

All three of these example policies are about your business, not your customer. They arise because well meaning operational decisions are made regarding equipment, staffing, or financing. If you are thinking it is impossible to ship smaller quantities, eliminate credit limits or shrink turnaround times, then maybe you have just found a paradigm.

Lean thinking focuses us on the customer and provides us with a paradigm that is not about what we can’t do. We can use lean tools to design processes that are aligned with the customer and not just the business. Strategy implementation requires us to prioritize based on the customer’s requirements.

Your business may introduce constraints, which are short term barriers to providing the customer with what they want. To stay in business for the long term you will need a strategy that uses continuous improvement to constantly break down your business barriers and move toward the customer at every turn. Thus, using new paradigms allows us to break free of our self imposed constraints and deliver to the customer what they really want and not just what we are constrained to provide. Isn’t this the strategy you really want - one focused on what the customer really wants?