In any company, being customer-oriented means knowing how to listen to and understand them, how to satisfy them profitably and how to build loyalty. In the B2B/B2G world in general, it means understanding each customer and each group of customers in all the possible variety of business types or “missions”, value criteria, influences and decision-making processes, operating modes, internal processes, company cultures and individual attitudes.
More specifically in the B2B/B2G high-tech world, it is basically staying close enough to customers to be able to untangle the complexity and variety of what “makes value” today and “will make value” tomorrow for customers depending on their business.
This is adding to it:
- understanding and anticipating customer behaviour in the face of technological innovation
- a sense of customer proximity, a detailed understanding of the customer experience, of the factors of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, of customer service
- the ability to maintain a constructive dialogue about existing or future technologies
- the ability to manage delicate issues of technological secrecy, intellectual property or co-ownership in this dialogue.
Internally, it means knowing how to bring together strong technical expertise with the ability to listen to customers in order to create and adapt its products and services. It means developing the services, whether they are basic or highly advanced, that customers need to operate at their best in their own business and knowing how to deliver these services efficiently and reliably while constantly improving them. It means knowing how to listen, but not just listen, in order to be able to innovate even beyond what customers can express and sometimes imagine.
Customer orientation is both essential and a source of difficulties for the B2B/B2G company, as it is necessary to balance the “voice of the customer in the company” and the “voice of the company with the customer”.
It is necessary to combine a highly technical internal culture with external dimensions, that of the markets, that of clients, each with their own “world”. This world is made up of business or “missions”, the evaluation of the profitability of an investment according to a particular cost structure, specific processes, service needs, operational or operating constraints, implementation, training, etc. It will often be necessary to recruit specialists in certain client areas considered particularly important (e.g. defence) in order to benefit from both their expertise and their networks of contacts.
In the technological company, it is above all a challenge of attitude to avoid technical arrogance, a challenge of observation and listening to capture the messages of customers beyond what they express, and a challenge of organisation to make a large number of actors in contact with customers cooperate.
