Beyond the Machine - Rethinking Customer-Centricity in Service Organizations
Photo by Kevin Curtis
The world of services continues to evolve. Yet, despite this progress, a familiar gap persists between what customers experience and what service providers intend to deliver. Why is it still so difficult to truly become customer-centric? And what kind of change does that challenge require?
This article revisits findings from a 2014 online study we conducted in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Deva Rangarajan and Dr. Bert Paesbrugghe. The study gathered insights from 150 senior leaders in Dutch service organizations and offers a still-relevant window into a deeper question: What holds organizations back from translating customer ambition into reality?
Customer-Centricity: Strategic Ambition or Daily Reality?
Customer-centricity is often positioned as a core ingredient for long-term success. Many organizations embrace it rhetorically — it appears in mission statements, strategy decks, and change programs. But delivering on that promise? That’s where it gets difficult.
Bridging the gap between aspiration and delivery requires more than processes and KPIs. It calls for a mindset and organizational design that allows customer value to emerge, not just be managed.
Internal Collaboration: A Common but Incomplete Strategy
In our 2014 research, internal collaboration emerged as the most frequently cited strategy for becoming more customer-centric. Respondents described efforts such as:
Sharing customer information across departments
Forming cross-functional teams to solve client issues
Holding regular meetings to align across service lines
These steps are valuable, but they aim to improve what’s already in place—optimizing delivery, resolving friction, and aligning internal handovers. The focus remains primarily within the organization.
That’s the tension: while internal collaboration keeps the machine running, it rarely invites new thinking. True customer-centricity doesn’t emerge from efficiency alone. It grows when teams make space to question assumptions, step into the customer’s context, and explore what matters, beyond the mechanics of service delivery.
The Real Shift: From Internal Focus to Shared Discovery
The more profound shift organizations face is not one of efficiency but perspective. From asking “How can we work together to solve today’s issues?” to asking “What is valuable to our customers — and how can we discover that together?”
This is where sensemaking comes in—not as a buzzword but as a practical and strategic capability: the ability to pause, reflect, explore uncertainty, and generate shared understanding—internally and with customers.
In that light, we identified two systemic barriers organizations must overcome to move beyond incremental improvement and toward genuine customer value creation.
1. From Data to Deep Insight: Knowing the Customer
Although customer knowledge seems to be a given in service organizations, our study revealed otherwise. Many respondents rated their organizations low on two critical points:
Understanding customers’ latent needs
Having systems to share customer insights internally
Despite years of investment in CRM and data infrastructure, the gap remains. Much of the information organizations collect is operational — helpful in running the machine, but not for understanding the person behind the problem.
The breakthrough lies in shifting from data collection to relational insight. That means initiating real conversations with clients, exploring their context, priorities, and aspirations. Just as importantly, turning those insights into living knowledge across the organization, not static reports buried in systems.
This breakthrough requires courage, curiosity, and a tolerance for ambiguity. Insight doesn't emerge on command. But without it, any attempt at customer-centricity risks staying superficial.
2. Structure that Enables — Not Prevents — Collaboration
The second barrier lies deeper in the system: the structure and governance of most service organizations. Departments, KPIs, budgets, and management layers often reinforce silo thinking. Leaders are measured on what they control, not what they co-create.
True customer-centricity requires shared goals, integrated processes, and collective ownership of outcomes. It demands more than functional alignment—it demands redesigning how people work together.
We’ve seen that what gets in the way is not resistance to change, but a lack of structural permission. When systems reward individual performance over collective value, collaboration remains fragile.
Building new ways of working — with cross-boundary incentives, shared metrics, and space for experimentation — is essential. But underneath all of that lies one foundational requirement: trust.
Why Quick Wins Often Aren’t Wins at All
In the years since our research, we’ve seen countless change programs start with great energy, only to stall when it’s time to scale. The pattern is familiar:
A bold vision is launched
Pilot projects generate short-term success
Momentum fades when the real work of organizational change begins
These programs do not fail due to a lack of effort. They fail because they underestimate the difference between a project mindset and a mental transition.
Customer-centricity is not an initiative. It’s a capability that needs to be built, sustained, and continuously re-examined — especially in complex service environments. That takes time, leadership, and a different rhythm of change.
What’s Next: Creating the Conditions for Breakthroughs
So what can leaders do?
From our research and experience, three intertwined challenges emerge:
Generate deeper customer insight, not just more data
Build systems and cultures that allow those insights to flow across teams
Foster a mindset that drives collaboration by shared purpose, not just structure
These challenges are not about pulling a few levers. It’s about rethinking what kind of organization you want to be. A better-oiled machine? Or a more adaptive, meaningful, and customer-driven system?
The future belongs to the latter. Do you want to explore our research findings within your organization? Reach out to us!