From Product-Centric to Customer-Centric: A Journey Impossible to Complete in a Single Day
For years now, a mantra has echoed through many boardrooms: “We must become Customer-Centric”. It’s a vibrant, ambitious message—often proclaimed with the lightness of someone not fully aware of the structural implications behind it.
Adopting customer orientation as a strategy is not a policy you roll out in a 24-hour sprint. It’s a DNA-level transformation that requires months of internal demolition and reconstruction. That’s right: some things must be dismantled before a new structure can be bolted into place.
In essence, it’s a journey impossible to embark on and complete within the accelerated timeframe many leaders would prefer—one with enormous consequences that most organizations are not prepared to face.
The Starting Point: The Three Business Mindsets
Before beginning the journey, it’s crucial to understand where we’re coming from. Historically, companies have operated under three major mindsets. Most aspire to jump from the first to the third, overlooking the intermediate—and often dysfunctional—one:
1. The Product-Centric Paradigm
Here, everything revolves around the offering. The organization focuses on technical excellence, manufacturing efficiency, and piling on functionalities. The key question is: “What can we build with the best engineering and the best margin?”. The customer is a buyer, not a collaborator.
Another important question—often ignored or never raised—is whether the customer actually values those new features and is willing to pay for them.
2. Sales-Centric
This is the dangerous mindset. The company is no longer product-centric because the product isn’t enough, but it’s not customer-centric either due to mistrust in the motivations and costs of such a transition. The priority is to move inventory and maximize short-term revenue.
Here, Sales is the one flying the plane and setting the agenda. Problems arise, for example, when Sales promises customizations that Operations cannot deliver, creating internal friction and an inconsistent customer experience.
The question becomes: “How do we close as many deals as possible today without harming the future cost of the relationship?”
3. The Customer-Centric Goal
The focus shifts not only to the customer and their problem, but to orchestrating all available channels in harmony so that the customer can approach the organization when and how they want.
Product excellence becomes a baseline. The value lies in the full solution and the relational experience. The key question: “What problem can we solve for our customer in the easiest and most valuable way, and how do we monetize that relationship long-term?”
The Two Critical Questions Before Beginning
When a company expresses the desire to become Customer-Centric, it has only two options: pursue it with strategic conviction or with indifference. To ensure the first path, leadership must rigorously answer two fundamental questions:
1. Why Customer-Centric, and why now?
Some organizations adopt the label without building the strategic rationale. The answer cannot be “because competitors are doing it” or “because that’s where the industry narrative is heading.” This explicit answer is rarely stated, but it becomes evident when one demands clear and unequivocal reasoning.
The real answer must be a clear market diagnosis:
- Risk vs Opportunity: Are we stagnating because our product is no longer a differentiator? Has churn increased due to poor experience?
- Financial Alignment: Have we calculated the cost of not being Customer-Centric (lost LTV, lower loyalty)?
- Moment of Truth: Do we have the capability, financial muscle, and leadership commitment to sustain a transformation that spans multiple fiscal years? Can we withstand stakeholder pressure throughout the journey?
“There must be unwavering conviction: it will be essential to navigate the many obstacles ahead—some significant enough to jeopardize the entire journey.”
The “why now” must act as the anchor when early results fail to appear and internal resistance rises.
2. Are we aware of the enormous consequences of this approach?
This is the turning point. Becoming Customer-Centric is not a new coat of paint; it’s a controlled demolition and reconstruction of the company’s DNA.
A. Consequences for Mindset and Culture
This is the deepest and hardest change: shifting from a company that sells things to a company that solves problems.
- From Silos to Collaboration: Departments stop operating independently. Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Product must share responsibility and metrics for the end-to-end Customer Experience.
- The Customer Has the Final Word: Leaders must set aside ego and intuition to accept that customer data (behavior, frustrations, feedback) is the only strategic truth.
B. Organizational and Structural Consequences
Functional org charts become obsolete—they’re built for internal efficiency, not for customer flow.
- Ins and Outs: The transformation requires new profiles (CX Designers, Data Architects, Growth Hackers) and the exit or reassignment of leaders who, though valuable in Product-Centric or Sales-Centric models, cannot operate without silos or with a long-term value mindset.
- KPI Reengineering: Internal efficiency metrics (Margins, Production Volume) remain, but are joined by relational and predictive metrics (NPS, LTV, CES).
- Technology and Data: Legacy systems holding data in silos must be dismantled and replaced with platforms that enable a Single Customer View.
The Risk of Stopping Halfway
The biggest danger is starting the journey and abandoning it midway due to lack of commitment or budget. A half-done transformation only creates:
- Internal Disaffection: Employees see it as just another “pilot project” destined to die soon.
- Customer Friction: If the shift has been publicly communicated, the organization is promising a Customer-Centric experience that its internal structure still prevents—frustrating both customers and frontline teams.
The lesson is clear: if an organization is not willing to undertake this long and costly journey (in time, money, and leadership), it is better not to announce it at all.
Internal and external credibility are among the most valuable assets a company has—and they crumble when actions fail to match the message.
