Are you customer-focused or customer-centric?

The upcoming release of the APodA Strategic Plan for 2025 to 2027 enables the APodA to reflect on how it operates and why it exists; to reassess its purpose and values against emerging strategic pillars.

Strengthening customer-centricity

Driving this shift is a deliberate move towards becoming increasingly customer-centric. This demands the APodA to become bolder and think even bigger; to embrace untapped opportunities. The upcoming strategic plan is embedded in this commitment to customer centricity; given our purpose can only be fully nurtured through this approach.

To explore the difference between being customer-focused and customer-centric, we need to first transverse through some subtle nuances and learn together. The following insights have given the APodA cause to reflect, and they are shared below for widespread benefit.

Universal lessons for everyone

#1 What is your why?

As the APodA team collaboratively explores new ways of working, facilitated by transformation consultancy nue²¹, emerging lessons hold universal relevance. In fact, one of its starting points may be something you too, wish to ask yourself: why does your role or business exist?

Chances are, the answer you immediately provide may not go as far as your potential could reach. Try to think bigger if you can, even to the point of discomfort. What is the biggest conceivable purpose that captures why you get out of bed every day, to strive for what it is that you do?

#2 Who are your customers?

This line of thinking may bring up deeper reflections on who your customers are. As a podiatrist your customers are your patients; but they may also include your local community, key suppliers, or sporting groups. The APodA is also in the process of defining our customers, with members remaining at the heart of such considerations.

#3 Where do you stand (and where do you want to stand?)

Next, reflect on whether your ‘modus operandi’ is customer-focused or customer-centric; bearing in mind being customer-focused is no easy feat in itself. Is there scope to go even further with the service you provide, particularly in pursuit of a revised purpose? Again, try to sit within any discomfort if you can, since discomfort can be the precursor to progress.

The accompanying visuals crafted by nue21 may help to gauge where you currently stand on the spectrum of customer focus versus customer centricity.

Where the APodA is at

As the APodA continues on this path, marked by the strategy’s release in the coming months, it will continue to share insights on what it means to be customer-centric. Like any transformation, this path will not be linear or perfect. Mistakes will be made and an intrinsic part of this process is accepting that the path to customer centricity is never fully realised. It is deliberately ongoing, requiring constant reflection and improvement.

Whatever lessons lie ahead for the APodA, it will continue to embrace any such discomfort in support of greater growth; for everyone’s sake and most of all – for the sake of the profession and the health consumers it serves.