Is Customer-Centricity killing your business?

Could obsessing over Net Promoter Scores mean you are about to be eaten alive by competitors who ignore their customers?

This article is deliberately provocative - I've taken an extreme view to make a point, and to make it more fun to read - while some of these issues and ideas won't fit every company, every company should be aware of them.

Let me start with a confession: I've spent the last decade driving companies to become more "customer-centric", I helped implement NPS programmes, and preached the gospel of "voice of the customer" to internal delivery teams that were more passionate about the tech than what the customer wanted. And I've just realised I might have been completely wrong.

Not slightly wrong. Not "needs some adjustment" wrong. Completely, fundamentally, dangerously wrong. Bugger.

The Customer-Centricity Trap

Here's what no one wants to admit: most customer-centric companies have become weak, reactive businesses that dance to whatever tune their customers are humming today. They've confused listening to customers with strategic leadership, and they're about to pay a brutal price for it.

Think I'm being dramatic? Let me ask you this: when was the last time a customer asked for something truly revolutionary? When did focus groups demand the iPhone, Netflix streaming, or Uber? They didn't. Customers asked for better Blackberries, more convenient video stores, and cheaper taxis.

The companies that gave customers exactly what they asked for are now museum pieces.

The Innovation Paralysis Problem

Customer feedback is an innovation killer, customers can only articulate needs based on their current understanding of what's possible. They're brilliant at identifying problems but terrible at imagining solutions they've never seen.

I've watched this play out dozens of times. A company gets excited about a breakthrough idea, then sends it to their customer advisory board. Six months later, the revolutionary concept has been focus-grouped into another incremental improvement that competes on features rather than creating new categories.

Meanwhile, somewhere else, a competitor is building the future by ignoring what customers say they want and focusing on what they actually need, even if they can't articulate it yet.

The Strategy Drift Disease

Here's the real killer, customer-centricity creates companies without strategic backbone. When you constantly adapt to customer feedback, you become everything to everyone and nothing distinctive to anyone.

I've seen software companies add so many "customer-requested" features that their products became unusable Swiss-army knives. I've watched service companies chase every customer complaint until they lost any sense of what they actually stood for.

The most customer-centric companies often have the weakest positioning because they've optimised for customer satisfaction instead of competitive differentiation.

The Data Deception

Here's something that'll really upset the customer experience crowd, customer feedback is notoriously unreliable. Customers subconciously lie in surveys (social desirability bias is real), their stated preferences contradict their buying behaviour, and they often don't know what they want until they see it.

New Coke tested brilliantly with customers. So did countless other products that died spectacular deaths in the market. Meanwhile, products that customers initially hated, like the original iPhone keyboard or Netflix's shift to streaming, went on to dominate their categories.

We're making strategic decisions based on data that's fundamentally flawed, then wondering why our customer-centric strategies aren't driving growth.

What Actually Works: Vision-Led, Customer-Informed

Before the customer experience professionals grab their pitchforks, let me be clear: I'm not arguing for ignoring customers. I'm arguing against letting customers drive strategy.

The companies that consistently win follow a different model, they're vision-led but customer-informed. They have a clear perspective on where markets are heading and what customers need (even if customers can't articulate it), then they use customer insights to refine execution, not determine direction.

Tesla didn't build electric cars because customers were demanding them. Apple didn't create the App Store because focus groups asked for it. Amazon didn't launch AWS because enterprises were clamouring for cloud computing.

These companies saw opportunities customers couldn't imagine, then executed with customer needs in mind.

The Resource Allocation Problem

Here's another uncomfortable truth, customer-centricity is expensive and often wasteful. Companies pour resources into customer experience teams, satisfaction surveys, and bending over backwards to make a grumpy customer happy (who never will by the way, they just like being grumpy), while their competitors invest in R&D, strategic partnerships, and market-shaping initiatives.

I've seen companies hire armies of customer success managers to improve NPS scores while cutting investment in product innovation. Guess what happens when a competitor launches something genuinely better? All those satisfied customers disappear overnight.

Customer satisfaction is a lagging indicator of strategic success, not a leading indicator of future growth.

The Competitive Reality Check

The brutal reality is this, in competitive markets, customer-centric companies often become commodity providers. You end up in a race to the bottom, competing on who can satisfy customers most cheaply rather than who can create the most value.

When everyone optimises for customer satisfaction, the only way to differentiate is on price.

Meanwhile, vision-led companies are creating new categories, setting market direction, and building competitive moats that customer feedback could never have designed.

The Way Forward: Strategic Customer Focus

So what's the alternative? It's not ignoring customers, you could try that but I wouldn't recommend it... it's being strategically selective about which customers to obsess over and which feedback to act on.

Focus obsessively on your ideal customers (the ones who represent your market's future) and largely ignore everyone else. Use customer insights to understand deep problems worth solving, not to generate feature requests. Build products that solve problems customers have but can't articulate, rather than responding to what they say they want.

And for the love of all that's strategic, stop letting customer advisory boards drive your product roadmap.

The Hard Truth

The companies that will dominate the next decade won't be the most customer-centric, they'll be the most strategically coherent. They'll have clear vision about where markets are heading, distinctive positioning that attracts ideal customers while repelling others, and the courage to say no to customer requests that don't align with strategic direction.

Customer-centricity was supposed to be a competitive advantage. Instead, it's become a strategic liability that's making businesses weak, reactive, and indistinguishable from their competitors.

The question is: will you have the courage to lead your customers to better solutions, or will you keep following them toward commoditisation?

Ready to build a vision-led business that creates customer demand rather than just responding to it? The companies that figure this out first will own their markets.

What's your experience with customer-centricity versus strategic vision? Has customer feedback ever killed a good idea in your organisation?