Against customer-centricity
I was recently invited to a conference to give a speech about sustainability. The event was an international gathering of experts, decision-makers, and solution providers in “intelligent mobility” in tomorrow’s smart cities.
I was the last one to intervene and before me I had the pleasure to listen to 25 speakers (all men, but one! go figure!), representing a broad spectrum of stakeholders in smart mobility. They came with different projects and visions. All different, but linked by a common thread: they all claimed to be customer-centric.
I discovered I have a problem with that.
When my turn came I started by warning that I was going to be pedantic, because I was going to talk about people, not customers. There is a big difference, I believe, between people and customers, a difference that can explain, I think, the ongoing decline of our society.
Yes, I think the root of our problems is that we have become too much of a customer and not enough people.
Let’s start by defining ‘people’ here, as the participants to the beautiful human invention that is society. People are the constituents of society and are defined by their ability to thrive within it, benefit from its perks, defend its structure. Human beings become ‘people’ — in the sense I want to attribute this word to, here — when they…
