Build processes for customer centricity: Nilekani

BANGALORE: Infosys CEO and Managing Director Nandan Nilekani stressed on the need for organisations to build processes that focuses on their customers. He called the initiative as the Customer Facing Processes. He said that during the last ten years, India has been able to make a mark in the IT services market due to the high quality processes Indian organisations have built in their engineering skills.

"There is a need to emulate the same in terms of customers," he added. Nilekani was delivering the keynote address at a seminar on Customer Centricity for Business Excellence, which is being held as part of the ongoing BangaloreIT.com 2002.

Nilekani said that Customer Facing Processes should be as solid as we build our engineering processes. "If our engineering processes is very strong and the customer facing process weak, it will not help, since the customer will form an opinion on the basis of his experience with you," he said.

Customer centricity is all about attitude, systems, organizational structure and the creation of metric. "In the services business, every point of contact with the customer at every level is a moment of truth. Therefore, customer centricity is important. Customer centricity is an acquirable skill and you can teach your employees. Make sure that every person who interacts with the customer is customer centric. That kind of customer centricity will help bring trust, repeat business and volume of business," Nilekani said.

"The more you get into customers' shoes and understand them, the more likely it is that you would be able to give them value. It is important that you understand the person and his or her psychology. All of us should learn to listen; listen to the customers' business, their challenges and organisation structure. Organizations should have a plan in place to identify how they can add value to their customers. They should then be converted into systems," Nilekani advised.

He stressed on the need to become customer focused. "Everybody in the organisation has to be customer focus and develop sensitivity to what customer is all about. We should put the customer at the center of our organizational structure," he said.

"It is very important that whatever manner an organisation is structured internally, the customer should always have a single integrated view of the company. It might mean that somebody in the organisation has to be responsible in ensuring that the integration among all the departments for this purpose takes place," he said.

Nilekani pointed out that it was imperative that the customer was not understood as an individual. "We should know the structure of our customer organisation. The more you understand the dynamics of the customer map, the better you can deliver. Multi-level client relationship has to be built and each of them should understand the value proposition you give them," he said.