Customer centricity is becoming a popular model for transformation and operating model design. But customers’ needs keep changing. How do you remain customer centric in such a volatile context?

There are two key drivers of change, one is changing customer needs and other is technology innovation, and they both need different type of interventions. We can monitor changes in customer needs by using customer listening techniques and by co-creating innovations. By being proactive in following this practice, we can stay fairly close to evolving customer needs.

Innovations can be in-sourced and crowd sourced, but biggest challenges firms face is allocation of resources to develop and commercialize innovations. This is where customer centricity can be of help. One may use customer centric methods to collect early feedback on innovations and prioritise based on that. This can help us manage innovations pipeline and sustain competitive advantage.