Is the Customer or the Company the Most Important?

While we have, for many years, valued the customer in terms of a means for purchasing the products that we (all knowing companies) developed, the future holds a much different path. The customer really is the most important part of the business as they are in control and often times creating the product they want to purchase. The openness of the internet and interconnectivity it has created allows for customers to collaborate and drive production in the direction that is important to them. So, while traditional businesses have said they have the best interests of their customers or clients at heart, it is doubtful they really did. In fact, they had their business strategies and profit margins at heart.


Now, customers collaborate and design their own businesses to create the products that they want to purchase. Companies that realize this and provide a platform for this to occur will develop the ultimate prize, a relationship with the customer. This relationship is the one thing that will keep a customer coming back to them to purchase their products, the one thing that can not be commotitized.

I would imagine that this revelation is frightening for companies that are behind in the technological aspects of being able to provide this customer experience. In addition, there is little understanding of the net generation. There is significant interest in capturing their attention, but little effort in developing the systems and processes they want to engage in to capture them. Again, it seems to be ego driven in that there is a belief that these customers will do business with us because we’ve been around for a long time, we are the market leader. When in fact, they may want a very different experience than what can be provided by the old guard. Failure to embrace and provide the experience that is desired by this new customer will drive them away. Thus, losing a significant opportunity to gain market share. The bottom line is who will be willing to change, invest and open up to allow this new customer to be a partner in the business instead of just a customer.

I see this unfolding within my organization. We want ever so badly to capture the “youthful” market. That is where true growth will come. But, it seems at every turn, we are hampered by our legacy systems, reason upon reason why we can’t do something and old thinking. We are our worst enemy and can’t seem to break out of a perpetual downward cycle. It’s sort of like Happy Days (not to date myself here), when everyone wanted to be cool like Fonzie, but they just couldn’t pull it off. No matter how much you practiced saying “AYYYY”, you just looked like a poser. To attract the net generation, you have to go all in and make the changes that are really necessary to recreate yourself as a company that will be inviting to them. I’m not at all sure we can pull that off.