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Unlike in the past, where the product and brand are at the centre of the company, Rethinking Marketing [1] is all about customer-centricity. It explains why the right culture, incentives and customer-centric strategy must be created and driven from the top to be successfully implemented.
I remember very well when we started the development of our Double Block & Bleed Valve Series. We called it “VariAS-Blocks”. Production started 20 years ago, and we have made many improvements since there.
We based the design on the standard SHELL MESC SPE 77/165 (which the MESC SPE 77/170 superseded) and EEMUA 182.
“Customer is king!” This age-old business mantra underlines the importance of the customer in every business. What I believe the truth is, most entrepreneurs understand the importance of the customer and talk about providing quality customer experience, yet a significant number of companies are still a long way off ensuring their business functions like a well-oiled customer-centric machine.
Today, manufacturing has become global. Imagine a salesman in Europe or America. He supplies his product for a project in the Middle East, coming from their factory in India, which sources its raw material from China or other parts of the world. It has support and customer service from Southeast Asia. This scenario is common in companies with operations across the globe.
Severe problems can arise if industrial valves are defective in chemical plants or in oil or gas applications – possibly with leaks. The broken industrial valves must be replaced as soon as possible. Without long delivery times.
Working as a CSO, one could think that of course, you must be customer-centric… But I noticed that some of my peers don’t really understand what customer centricity actually means, they are still too much “product” focused. So, what does customer-centricity mean? Does defining it even matter? It definitely does!
