Three Types of Customer-Centric Strategies

What can you do to be more customer-centric?

First, let me share my definition of customer-centric: Solving specific customer problems cheaper, faster, or easier.

So how can you do that?

According to Clayton Christensen there are three distinct ways:

1. Sustaining Innovation
2. Low-End Disruptive Innovation
3. New Market Disruptive Innovation



1. Sustaining Innovation
Deliver better performance to highly demanding buyers in an existing market. Crowd Spring is my favorite example. In the new transparent world of social media, graphic designers and ad agencies are struggling with the commodization of their product. As one of my graphic designer friends said upon seeing Crowd Spring for the first time, "This makes me sick to my stomach." Crowd Spring is a crowd sharing web site for graphic designers. A buyer simply posts a project and creative brief on the site with a budget--a very low budget. For example a logo and identity for a new architectural firm for $500. Depending on what market you're in, that is either very low or "wouldn't buy me a cup of coffee" low. Here's the really bad part for designers: Fully developed concepts are submitted from graphic designers all over the world. Hundreds of them. When the buyer selects the concept he or she likes, then the $500 is released to that designer. Bottomline: For $500, this buyer gets to see hundreds of concepts and ideas and only pay for the one they choose. Crowd Spring is providing remarkably better performance (in the form of same quality for much cheaper prices) to highly demanding buyers in an existing market.



2. Low-End Disruptive Innovation
Give “over-served” buyers “good enough” performance at lower prices. My hero R. Sam Bowers described it this way: In the old world, sellers always sought to exceed the buyer's expectations--go above and beyond what is being asked for. Today, buyers have learned that the extra effort costs money. What buyers want is "good enough" at lower prices. A great example of this is healthcare where striving for the highest quality has been the mantra. This mission has also resulted in the runaway costs of healthcare. Minute Clinic discovered that there are many ailments for which patients just want "good enough". For $40 you can get diagnosed and get presciption meds and be on your way in less than an hour. These patients don't need a doctor, a nurse practioner will do. Minute Clinic is providing "over-served" patients with "good enough" care at much lower prices.



3. New Market Disruptive Innovation
Provide “excluded buyers” a simple, lower cost, easy solution. Traditionally, there have been services or products that have been priced beyond the reach of many potential buyers. One of these is business legal services. LegalZoom has changed all that. Now, small businesses can get the legal documents and services they need for prices that fit their budgets. LegalZoom has created a new market by finding a significantly cheaper way to deliver the service.


In today's new customer-centric world, marketers need ways to increase their competitive advantage and win more business. Employ one or more of these three customer-centric strategies and you will be amazed by the results.

A final note about profit and margin. The only example above that diminishes margin is Crowd Spring. But it diminishes it for a commodity. You can't put lipstick on a pig and you can't add margin to a commodity. The other two invent better processes that actually increase margin while dramatically lowering price.

Better, Faster, Cheaper

The following is from Mount Union College website.

I met Sam Bowers at a TEC meeting in De Pere, WI in 2007. His innovative perspective was incredibly enlightening. The rise of social media has accelerated his predictions. I pinged Chris Brogan on Twitter yesterday when he was commenting about weak customer service at a bank. I told him opportunistic profiteering is dying. The collapse of the financial markets was inevitable because they were the most visible symbol of opportunistic profiteering.

The rise of social media coincides with the rise of the empowered buyer. We're burning our loyalty cards and we're not going to take it anymore!

As marketers, we need to pay attention:


According to Bowers, president and founder of the Service Sales Institute, we are moving from the industrial revolution into the second major phase in modern business known as a “technology revolution” which will alter and change the world.

“Today we are using more and more technology to produce more and more output at an ever greater quality,” said Bowers. “We are going to see better, faster and cheaper explode in the coming future of business.”

Bowers believes that because of the advancement in technology, robotics and computers, the way companies do business is changing because the customers themselves are becoming better and smarter buyers.

In addition, Bowers stressed marketing as the key in today’s business world because buyers are doing their own research. The Internet has supplied buyers and customers with enough information to make better decisions and to find comparable products at a lesser cost.

“Businesses are being faced with the ever increasing need to improve productivity while lowering costs,” said Bowers. “In a world where selling is disappearing, the most important business skill of the future is marketing.”

The old style of forming relationships and relying on a reputable sales staff to drive business decisions is becoming a thing of the past.

“Technology and the use of the web is altering the way companies bring products or services to the market and marketing is drawing potential buyers to the product or services,” said Bowers.

According to Bowers, e-commerce is the next step.

“Customers have access to better technology and more information and demand alternative sources,” Bowers added. “Customers are driving businesses to e-commerce. They are looking for evermore increasing sources that can give them what they want at the lowest possible price.”

Bowers concluded that the future is now and he challenged the students in attendance to stay up with technology

“Companies are going to rely on and need today’s students to move them into this new age of technology in order to survive,” said Bowers.

Bowers has also been president and chief operating officer of multiple divisions of a company he helped grow from $7 million to over $465 million, and an economics professor. He has spoken to thousands of chief executive officers and numerous associations as well as conducted hundreds of strategic planning and positioning meetings for corporations.

The Smith Lectureship in Business was established in 2001 by C. Richard Smith, a 1953graduate of Mount Union College. The purpose of this Lectureship is to bring business professionals to the Mount Union College campus to share their knowledge and experience with business students, faculty and others from the campus and local community.