Corporations are becoming more attuned to listening to their customers. We see more and more of our clients implementing CEM (Customer Experience Management) systems. We see Voice of the Customer programs getting more senior level attention and sponsorship. We see the momentum of Net Promoter in the marketplace. But not all companies I encounter feel like they are getting results from listening to their customers, even though they should.

I constantly try to understand this. I ask myself “Why aren’t companies able to act on the information before them?” and “Why is it so hard for professional services firms to get companies to act?” While I believe these are complex questions to answer, if you’ll humor me with this blog post, I’m going to try to shed some light on these questions from a somewhat unconventional perspective.

We are all creatures of our environment. People inside companies are influenced by corporate lore and by the perspective of their current position. And consultants, internal or external, fail to realize how important lore and perspective are. We fail to acknowledge how shattering it may be for individuals to realize the basis of their strategy and actions is misguided, or based on inaccurate facts.

Corporate action, therefore, often manifests itself as evolution, not revolution. It is a never-ending succession of learning and decisions. If we are to judge the success or impact of listening to one’s customers, we need to do so with perspective. And to do this, we need to allow our programs time to work. After all, listening to your customers is not a fad, rather it’s a discipline. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a great English philosopher, once asked a friend, “Tell me, why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than the earth was rotating?” And his friend replied “Well obviously because it just looks like the sun is going round the earth.” And to that Wittgenstein replied, “Well what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth was rotating?”

Steven Nicks, Executive Vice President Steven.Nicks@phelongroup.com