Customer-Centricity: The Lie Companies Keep Telling Themselves
Ruth Pauline Wachter - Estimated reading time: 6 to 8 minutes.
I still remember realizing that “customer-centricity” is one of the business world’s most overused—and misunderstood—phrases. I was sitting in a boardroom with the leadership team of one of my clients, looking at reports filled with positive customer feedback scores. Everything seemed fine.
Yet, behind the scenes, growth had stalled, complaints were rising, and customers were quietly leaving.
The CEO boldly stated, “We are a customer-centric company.”
But it made me ask: Are you genuinely devoted to your customers, or are you merely making things easier for yourselves while believing it benefits them?
Step Into the Customer’s Shoes
Before we discuss solutions, let’s take a moment to experience what many of your customers go through. Imagine two different scenarios: one for a CFO and one for an executive leading innovation.
Scenario 1 – The CFO’s Invoice Challenge
You arrive at the office early, coffee in hand, ready to embrace the day ahead. Your inbox is already bustling, and one thing is clear: it’s month-end closing day.
For years, your finance team had a seamless workflow. Vendors sent invoices in a structured format, data flowed effortlessly into your system, and within minutes, a bot categorized everything automatically.
Then, one morning, a major telecom provider announces a “new self-service invoicing system designed to empower you.”
At first, it sounds promising. But soon, the reality sets in. Instead of receiving a single structured invoice, you must now log into a portal, download multiple invoices for each department, extract the relevant data, and manually split costs. What once took five minutes now consumes an hour.
Meanwhile, your other vendors continue to send invoices that can fully automated—categorized, allocated, and booked instantly.
Does this change feel customer-centric? Or has your provider simply shifted their administrative burden onto you and called it an improvement?
Scenario 2 – Alexa, the Smart Assistant That Forgot to Evolve
It’s a warm summer evening. You’re sitting on your terrace with guests, enjoying great food and conversation. As the sun sets and darkness creeps in, you casually say, “Alexa, turn on the terrace lights.”
Ding.
That infamous “done” tone. Except… nothing happens.
You try again. “Alexa, lights on.” Another ding. Still darkness.
By the fifth attempt, your guests witness a version of you they’ve never seen before—eyes twitching, voice rising, frustration bubbling over. You are now in a full-on debate with an AI assistant, passionately issuing commands while your guests sip their wine, trying not to laugh.
Someone jokes, “Maybe you should just turn on the switch yourself.”
And that’s exactly what you do.
Alexa was meant to simplify your life. Yet, at this moment, it tested your patience and left you feeling exposed in front of friends.
Amazon focused on launching Alexa as a device but failed to transform it into an evolving solution. While AI has made incredible strides, Alexa remains largely the same, failing at even the most basic requests while newer AI tools—ones that can draft emails, plan schedules, and even anticipate needs—charge confidently ahead.
It raises the question: Does Amazon truly understand its customers? Or is it stuck in an outdated vision, assuming that initial success meant evolution wasn’t necessary?
The False Promise of Customer-Centricity
These two examples expose what happens in many companies.
They claim to be customer-centric, but in reality, they make decisions that serve internal efficiency over customer experience. They roll out changes that optimize their workflows but create friction for customers. They celebrate satisfaction scores but ignore the effort required for customers to navigate their services.
This isn’t customer-centricity. It’s company-centricity—disguised as progress.
And the worst part? Most companies don’t even realize they’re doing it.
The Psychology of Customer-Centricity: Why Companies Resist What Customers Need
If you ask any executive whether they want to be customer-centric, they’ll say yes. But in practice, many organizations instinctively resist the very changes that would make them truly customer-focused.
This isn’t just a business challenge—it’s a psychological one.
Cognitive biases shape the way leaders interpret customer experience. When companies fail to evolve in ways that benefit customers, it’s not always intentional—it’s often a result of how human psychology interferes with decision-making.
The False Consensus Effect: The Leadership Blind Spot
Leaders assume customers think like they do. They believe that if a process makes sense internally, it must also make sense for customers.
But behavioral psychology research shows that leaders vastly overestimate how intuitive their services actually are. When they design systems based on internal logic rather than real customer behavior, friction emerges.
Status Quo Bias: Why Companies Resist Fixing What’s Broken
People are wired to prefer what’s familiar, even if it’s flawed.
Companies default to optimizing existing processes instead of questioning if those processes should exist in the first place.
This is why businesses spend millions improving bad systems instead of rethinking them entirely.
Loss Aversion: The Fear of Customer Complaints Over Customer Frustration
Research shows that humans are more sensitive to potential losses than potential gains (Tversky & Kahneman).
Businesses avoid making bold changes to customer experience out of fear that some customers might complain.
The irony? The biggest risk isn’t the vocal complainers—it’s the silent ones who say nothing and leave.
Effort Justification: The Dangerous Belief That Complexity = Value
The more effort people put into building something, the more valuable they believe it is.
This bias leads companies to defend complex processes because they took years to develop, rather than recognizing that customers just want effortless solutions.
The Behavioral Science of Winning Companies
Companies that lead in customer-centricity aren’t just optimizing services—they are rewiring decision-making at every level of the business.
They challenge assumptions. They force leadership teams to go through their own customer journey—without shortcuts. They measure customer effort, not just satisfaction. Most importantly, they recognize that real customer-centricity isn’t a project or an initiative—it’s a shift in how an organization thinks, decides, and behaves. The businesses that do this win not because they have the best products—but because they remove effort, reduce friction, and design for human behavior, not just business logic.
Because in the end, it’s not about what companies believe makes sense. It’s about what customers actually experience.
Why Leadership Is the Biggest Obstacle to Customer-Centricity
If a company truly wants to be customer-centric, it can’t rely on reports and secondhand insights.
A McKinsey study found that only 10% of executives regularly experience their own company’s service as a customer.
They don’t go through their own onboarding.
They don’t use their own customer portals.
They don’t sit on hold for their own support teams.
Instead, they rely on filtered reports from teams that are incentivized to highlight positive trends—not the painful realities customers experience daily.
When real issues do surface?
They are dismissed as exceptions, not patterns.
This is why most companies fail at customer-centricity—not because they don’t want to be, but because they have no real visibility into their customers' frustrations.
Customer-Centricity Isn’t a Project. It’s a Business Model Shift.
The companies that win aren’t just making incremental improvements. They fundamentally rethink how they operate.
They design services that eliminate work for the customer, not shift it.
They align business models so that customer success directly translates into business growth.
They challenge their own assumptions, breaking leadership blind spots that prevent true innovation.
Most companies won’t do this.
They’ll continue calling themselves customer-centric while optimizing for their own convenience.
But the ones that do? They’ll win. Because customers can tell the difference.
Where I Step In—And What’s Next
I don’t just analyze customer pain points—I design solutions that fix them, monetize them, and turn them into a competitive advantage.
With my expertise in customer behavior, service design, and business transformation, I work with companies to:
Identify hidden inefficiencies that are costing you revenue.
Design seamless, automated solutions that customers love.
Transform customer experience into a sustainable growth strategy.
The companies that take action now won’t just retain customers—they’ll outpace their competition by making customer experience their most valuable asset.
So, here’s your choice:
Keep assuming customers will tolerate inefficiencies.
Or take a hard look at what’s really happening—and fix it before they leave.
If you’re ready to make customer-centricity more than a slogan, let’s talk.
Book a free call. Let’s turn your customer challenges into your next competitive edge.
