Is your customer-focus future focused?

Strategic leaders focus on the future value they can deliver to their customers.

THINK ON IT: Is your customer-focus future focused?

There’s a lot of attention about creating customer-focused organizations—understanding their needs and creating satisfying experiences for them. We may even measure and monitor customer satisfaction scores, Net Promoter Scores, and First Contact Resolution scores.

That’s all well and good. One might even argue that these feedback measures are essential to understanding how to make improvements in your product.

But with all the focus on improving your products and services today, how much is your customer-focus future focused?

Your business changes. Your needs change. And so do those of your customers.

Strategic leaders are not just concerned with how to meet their customer’s current needs, but also in understanding how those needs might change in the future.

They know that even their best value proposition today has a shelf life. It could soon be rendered inert by an emerging customer need or opportunity that they failed to anticipate.

So, the savvy leader is never fully satisfied with their value prop. They know there’s more to come and they create a culture of inquiry among their team to discover those possibilities. They know that while they’re improving their offering today, they’re also deeply inquisitive about how they can deliver even greater value to their customers in the future.

What does your customer’s future look like? If you don’t have a clue, you may be missing your best opportunity to be a part of it.

Creating a culture of inquiry doesn’t need to be a complicated or lengthy process. Premium members, read on for some suggestions on how to make your customer-focus more future focused. (Become a Premium Member. Paid subscribers get access to nearly 100 tools and how-tos on implementing strategic topics, including a 7-part series to help leaders build their own strategic capacity.)

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“Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.”

— Steve Jobs

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