The Trade-Offs That Reveal True Customer Centricity

It’s not about being “easy” or “simple”—it’s about making hard trade-offs, embedding long-term trust, and preparing for a future where brands must serve not just human customers, but also machine ones.

Ilenia is a sought-after customer-centricity advisor, international keynote speaker, and author of Journey to Centricity. She helps companies worldwide shift from product mentalities to people mentalities, streamline processes, and find practical ways to create more value for their customers – resulting in stronger loyalty and sustainable growth. 

In this interview, she also stresses that true customer centricity is proven in the trade-offs companies make, not in mission statements. Vidili highlights cultural shifts such as purpose over profit, breaking down silos, empowering employees, and empathetic leadership as essential to embedding customer focus.

Full interview:

In your view, what separates genuine customer centricity from lip service? 

Genuine customer centricity is about fundamentally changing how a business behaves. Any company can claim to put customers first – you see the press releases and mission statements about “customers at the heart” – but the real proof is in trade-offs and actions. 

I’m often asked, “How do you know if a company is customer-centric?” and my answer is: I look at the trade-offs they are willing to make. This could mean delaying short-term profit to invest in long-term relationships, choosing to fix systemic issues rather than papering over them with discounts, or prioritising trust and transparency even if it slows growth. 

A genuinely customer-centric company will make decisions with a long-term view of customer relationships, even when it’s hard. In contrast, lip service happens when companies talk about customers, but internally, incentives and metrics are still all about short-term revenue and stock price. 

You can often tell the difference by whether the company’s behaviour aligns with its words. Are they investing in customer experience even if it doesn’t pay off immediately? Do leaders regularly spend time listening to customers on the front lines, or do they just review spreadsheets? 

It always astonishes me how many executives say they’re customer-centric yet have never actually met a customer in person. True customer-centricity means you’ve embedded the customer’s perspective into your culture and strategy – it’s sustained and consistent, not an occasional marketing campaign. 

In short, genuine customer-centric firms focus on the quality and depth of customer relationships, not just the number of customers or quick sales. As I write in my book, Journey to Centricity, “the number of customers means nothing if the relationship with them is flat.” 

If you had to define a “north star metric” for true customer centricity, what would it be? 

I would choose Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) as the “north star” metric for customer centricity. CLV represents the total value a customer brings over the entire relationship, not just a single transaction. Focusing on CLV forces you to think beyond short-term sales and ask, “How do we keep this customer happy and engaged for years, so they continue to choose us?” 

If CLV is rising, it means you’re doing something right, you’re earning repeat business, loyalty, and maybe referrals. It encapsulates many aspects of customer-centric success: retention, share of wallet, and loyalty all rolled into one indicator. 

Importantly, CLV shifts the mindset to long-term relationship-building. Instead of just looking at quarterly revenue, teams start to consider how their actions impact the customer’s lifetime with the company. 

For instance, investing in better support or product quality might not pay off this quarter, but it will increase retention and spending over time – thus boosting CLV. CLV is superb as a North Star metric, but only if you have reliable data and if your business model supports long-term relationships. 

In cases where transactions are rare or behaviour is hard to measure, you might need to supplement it with engagement or retention metrics. 

What are the most powerful cultural shifts an organisation must undergo to truly put the customer at the centre? 

Great question. It would take me a few days just to answer this one. To become truly customer-centric, an organisation often needs to undergo several deep cultural transformations. Some of the most powerful shifts include: 

• From profit-first to purpose-first: 

There needs to be a mindset shift where profit becomes the outcome of doing the right thing for customers, not the sole objective. This means embracing a higher purpose or mission that guides the company – a North Star beyond just making money. For example, when Hubert Joly turned around Best Buy, he shifted the culture from “let’s maximise profit” to “let’s fulfil a noble purpose for customers and employees.” Profit was treated as a result, not the goal. When a company rallies around a purpose like improving customers’ lives, it naturally starts making decisions in the customers’ interest. 

• Easing silos and aligning around the customer: 

Traditionally, companies organise around products and functions, which can create tunnel vision. A customer-centric culture eases internal silos and encourages collaboration across departments to serve customer needs holistically. Instead of each team worrying only about its own KPIs, everyone rallies around a common shared understanding of customer needs. This might involve new cross-functional teams focused on customer segments or experiences, and a free flow of customer insights across the organisation. The old mindset of “that’s not my department” goes away as everyone owns the customer experience in their own role. 

• Empowering and caring for employees: 

There’s a saying we often hear: happy employees = happy customers. To put customers truly at the centre, you must create a culture where employees feel valued, heard, and empowered to do what’s right for the customer. That means investing in employee training, wellbeing, and giving teams the autonomy to solve customer problems without bureaucratic hurdles. When employees are motivated and have a clear customer-focused mission, they will go the extra mile to delight customers. A customer-centric culture treats employees as internal customers – with respect, communication, and trust – so they can project the same to customers. 

• Leadership leading by example with empathy: 

Culture flows from the top. Leaders in a truly customer-centric company must model customer-focused behaviours. That includes regularly interacting with customers, listening to their feedback, and demonstrating empathy. 

Pizza Hut UK CEO, who literally spent a few hours waiting tables every month to stay connected with customers and frontline staff. When the C-suite shows that no one is too important to talk to customers or too proud to take criticism, it sends a powerful message. 

Leaders should also encourage a “fail fast, learn fast” mentality around customer innovation, rather than punishing any misstep. In short, the shift is to a humble, learning-oriented leadership style that prioritises customers over egos. 

Each of these cultural shifts helps ensure that putting the customer first is a daily practice. It’s about changing mindsets, structures, and habits – from the boardroom to the frontline – so that doing right by the customer becomes the path to success. 

How do you ensure that customer centricity is consistent globally when customer expectations can be highly local? 

Ensuring a consistent level of customer centricity globally, while honouring local expectations, is a balancing act of common principles and localised execution. First, a company needs a strong central culture and vision for customer centricity that is non-negotiable everywhere. 

Think of this as the global “DNA” of how you treat customers. 

For example, a core principle might be empathy and respect towards customers, no matter the country. Howard Schultz of Starbucks famously kept two empty chairs in every board meeting – one representing the customer and one the employee – to remind everyone of those voices in every decision. 

That kind of symbolic but powerful commitment sets a consistent tone from the top. Every employee worldwide knows that “we consider the customer in everything we do.” 

Around those shared values and standards, you then empower local teams to adapt and deliver in ways that make sense for their market. Customer expectations do vary – what delights a customer in Tokyo might differ from what a customer in rural Italy needs. 

A globally consistent approach doesn’t mean a one-size-fits-all product or script. It means the level of care, listening, and responsiveness should be equally high everywhere, but the solutions can be local. 

For instance, your support hours, product flavours, or user interface might be localised, but the commitment to solve the customer’s problem and make them feel valued stays constant. Communication and knowledge sharing are key here. The organisation should actively share customer insights across regions. 

If your Brazilian team discovers a new way to wow customers, that lesson can be rolled out globally if applicable. Likewise, a strong global customer-centric company learns from its local failures quickly and doesn’t repeat them elsewhere. 

Finally, consistency comes from having a clear decision-making framework that everyone uses, from HQ to local branches. At Best Buy, as part of their culture transformation, leadership introduced four simple questions to vet any initiative: 

Does it align with our purpose? Is it good for the customer? Can we deliver it well? And only then, can we make money from it?. Notice that “is it good for the customer?” came before “can we make money?”. 

A framework like that ensures that whether you’re a manager in New York or New Delhi, you’re making choices with the same priorities in mind. 

In summary, clarity of purpose and principles keeps you consistent globally, while local empowerment and insight keep you relevant locally. It’s about being “glocal” – globally unified, locally tuned.

If you imagine the “next frontier” of customer centricity, what does it look like beyond personalisation and loyalty? 

The next frontier of customer centricity will be shaped by a paradox: the more technology rises, the more human connection will be in demand. Customers are craving for it. They want brands that remember they are human beings, not just data points. So the future isn’t just about faster AI or hyper-personalisation, it’s about deeper human experiences that balance efficiency with empathy. 

At the same time, we’ll see the rise of machine customers, or Custobots. In simple terms, these are digital entities – algorithms, bots, or connected devices – that buy and interact with brands on behalf of humans. 

Imagine your fridge ordering milk before you run out, or a company’s AI system negotiating supplier contracts. It’s still customer behaviour, but the “customer” is now partly a machine acting in someone’s interest. This will change the game. 

Companies will need to design for two kinds of customers: the emotional human, who wants connection and trust, and the custobot, who wants efficiency, accuracy, and instant fulfilment. Success will come from balancing both. 

For humans, they should focus on trust, empathy, and emotional connection. That means meaningful conversations, transparent decisions, and experiences that make people feel valued. Humans will forgive a mistake if they feel companies care. For custobots, you build systems that are seamless, accurate, and fast. That means clean data, reliable APIs, and processes that machines can interact with directly. However, Custobots won’t forgive mistakes; they’ll just switch to a competitor’s system instantly. 

If you had to delete all your customer surveys and could only observe one behaviour to understand loyalty, what would you choose? 

If I had to delete all surveys and observe just one behaviour to understand loyalty, I’d watch the repeat purchase rate. Do customers come back and buy again without being pushed? That’s the clearest signal of trust and loyalty. 

A high repeat rate shows that people don’t just try you once – they choose you again, even when alternatives exist. It also links directly to long-term value, because loyal customers usually spend more over time. In other words, action speaks louder than survey NPS score. 

That said, it isn’t perfect in every industry. If you sell something people only buy once in a lifetime – like a car or a wedding ring – repeat purchase isn’t as telling. In those cases, you’d look at renewals, referrals, or continued engagement as equivalents. But in most sectors, whether customers return of their own accord is the most reliable window into real loyalty.

Tell us about your book and if you have any others in the pipeline. 

My book is called Journey to Centricity: A Customer Centric Framework for the era of Stakeholder Capitalism. It’s a roadmap for companies that want to move from product obsession to customer obsession. 

The core idea is that we’re now in the age of stakeholder capitalism, where companies have to create value not just for shareholders, but for customers, employees, and society at large. The book explains why this shift is happening and, more importantly, how to navigate it. 

I provide a framework built on three main pillars: Humanity, Technology, and Culture. 

• The Humanity pillar is about the “why” – infusing your business with purpose, empathy, and trust. It shows how brands can become more human by having an authentic mission, practising empathy with customers, and building trust – the real currency of relationships. I’ve also created a LinkedIn Learning course on customer trust for those who want to explore this topic in a practical way. 
• The Technology pillar addresses the “how” – using digital tools and innovation as enablers to deliver great customer experiences. This isn’t just about having the latest tech for its own sake, but using things like product innovation, ease of use, and even hyper-personalisation responsibly to make customers’ lives easier. I talk about balancing high-tech with human-touch, so that technology serves human needs. 
• The Culture pillar is about the “who” – it dives into the people side of the business. I argue that you cannot become customer-centric without transforming your organisational culture. That means leadership mindset, easing silos and creating an environment where employees are motivated and empowered to put the customer first. I share a lot of real-world examples and even interviews I conducted with leaders and experts to illustrate how culture change can happen. 

I’m now exploring the subject for my next book. I’m also working on something new, which will launch next year. It isn’t a book, a course, or a programme. It’s a hands-on tool that companies will be able to use to accelerate their customer-centric growth. 

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