Best practices in achieving a customer-focused culture

Purpose - This paper aims: to provide practical insights into how organisations can become more customer-focussed; to share with researchers and organisations a framework that can be used to research "customer focus culture" and assess an organisation's level of customer focus; to describe how New Zealand's first consortium approach to benchmarking was managed so that others interested in planning a consortium study can learn from this experience. Design/methodology/approach - The benchmarking study was conducted by member organisations of the New Zealand Benchmarking Club and facilitated by a doctoral student from Massey University's Centre for Organisational Excellence Research. The methodology involved conducting an extensive literature review to identify national and international best practices in customer focus, developing a survey that was completed by 32 potential best practice organisations, and selecting seven of these organisations for a best practice visit. Findings - A framework for the examination of customer-focused culture was developed and the findings from the study reveal practical "new" insights into best practices in customer focus. Research limitations/implications - Benefits would have been gained from extending the study to include a larger international group seeking further examples of good-to-best practices. Practical implications - Insights into how organisations can become customer-focused; a framework that can be used by researchers to research "customer focus culture" and by organisations to assess their level of customer focus; insights into how to run a benchmarking study. Originality/value - This paper reports on the first consortium approach to benchmarking that has been used within New Zealand; it shares some of the latest best practices in customer focus; a customer focus culture framework has been developed - the first of which the authors are aware.