customer’s trust and encourage the latter to behave cooperatively with the service provider (Poujol and Siadou-Martin 2012). It is, therefore, not surprising that customer orientation is an approach that is now in demand in the sales context (Julienne and Banikema 2017).
1.1.2.3. Customer orientation and its impact on the employee
From a more social perspective, a number of empirical studies have sought to establish a relationship between a company’s customer orientation and the work attitudes of its employees. These studies have focused on variables such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment and involvement. Strong links between customer orientation and these variables have been consistently shown. Customer orientation would build esprit de corps among employees, greater job satisfaction as well as greater commitment5.
1.1.3. Implementing customer orientation
While it is clear that customer orientation is a relevant strategic approach, the challenge is to implement it within the company. A gap may exist between what the company says about its customer orientation and what its customers say about it.
When it comes to customer orientation, it is not so much what the company says, but what the customer perceives. Cap Gemini Consulting, in a 2014 research report, highlighted this potential divergence: “56% of companies claim to be customer oriented. Only 12% of their customers approve!”6
1.1.3.1. Commitment of top management
Top managers must have a strong and clear message about their commitment to customer orientation. The discourse must transmit a vision centered on this orientation, be able to mobilize energies by carrying a deep meaning beyond the conventional and act on the cognitive and affective organizational systems7. The speech must be concrete, illustrated with real examples, stories and real-life experiences and animated by symbols in order to be as mobilizing as possible. The speech must be followed by strong and clear decisions about the organization, its structure and the chosen strategy. To be effective, customer orientation must be based on more fluid decision-making processes and more cross-functional collaboration between teams and departments. New organizational and management methods, like the agile method, which puts the customer at the heart of the process and encourages team autonomy and accountability, are likely to be effective in supporting the implementation of customer orientation.
Guillaume Faury, successively CEO of Airbus Helicopter, then of the civil aviation branch of Airbus and finally of the Airbus Group, has always put the customer first in his speeches:
We are starting the year under a new brand, Airbus Helicopters, which is for us much more than a new name, it touches the DNA of Airbus, it touches ambitions like customer satisfaction, quality, safety, industrial efficiency.8
The first challenge for Airbus is obvious. It’s about serving our customers and ramping up production.9
We need to prepare the Airbus of tomorrow in order to better serve our customers, increase our competitiveness and grow in a sustainable way.10
1.1.3.2. Manager’s adhesion
The quality of management, and especially middle management, is widely considered to be the essential foundation for implementing customer orientation (Hartline et al. 2000). This is all the more true in a service environment where proximity to the field, the market and the customer is strong. The managerial challenge is twofold: managers must be personally involved in a customer orientation and must also lead their team in the direction of a customer orientation. They must set an example, be a reference in terms of behavior and attitude for their team. Their decisions and arbitrations must clearly show the priority given to the customer. They will also have to be attentive to the way in which their team lives this customer orientation. Customer relations and customer satisfaction are not always easy realities for employees. They must also encourage collaboration between teams, functions and departments. It is up to managers to allow their teams to break out of their strictly defined perimeters. There cannot be customer orientation without autonomy and risk-taking. Expected managerial skills are, therefore, inevitably enriched. While traditional skills, like technical skills for an engineer, remain essential, they are no longer sufficient to effectively implement customer orientation. This customer orientation becomes particularly sensitive in the context of the implementation of entrepreneurial projects with high technical content.
Studies have looked at the leadership style that would be most conducive to the implementation of a customer orientation in the company. They highlight a specific leadership style called transformational leadership11. The transformational leader succeeds in getting colleagues and collaborators to go beyond their personal interests, to converge in the same direction and to win their support by explaining and bringing meaning (Barabel and Meier 2015, p. 614).
Box 1.1. Testimony of Matthieu Somekh (CEO and Co-Founder of ZEBOX, Former President of France is AI and Former Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the École Polytechnique)
ZEBOX is an international incubator-accelerator of innovative start-ups, located in Marseille, specialized in the transport, logistics, mobility and Industry 4.0 sectors.
Entrepreneurs are strongly committed to the development of their innovation in order to confirm the existence of a market, to demonstrate the adequacy between the latter and their offer and to attract customers. Their ability to do so will be a determining factor in their entrepreneurial success.
Nevertheless, there are several types of entrepreneurs, including those who are more business-oriented and those who are more “techno”-oriented. The business-oriented profile launches itself into the creation of a company following different professional experiences, which led him to the observation of a non-optimal or even non-existent response to an observed problem. The projects carried by this type of profile are generally relatively well aligned with the satisfaction of a need. A second profile, which could be called “technologist”, develops a technological solution before specifying its potential on the market. The risk associated with such an approach is to see efforts pushed in a non-optimal direction because they do not address a real market problem.
A structure like ZEBOX, positioned on innovative projects, essentially dedicated to B2B, combines both types of profiles. In both cases, one of ZEBOX’s missions, supported by its corporate partners12, is to help entrepreneurs better understand the markets in which they are evolving (or will evolve) with regard to their specificities and their assets. The support on the strategic aspect of the project will make it possible for them to take the necessary distance to confront the market and exchange with multiple profiles of potential customers. This exercise will be an opportunity for them to refine their value proposition, thus maximize their chances of meeting their market and eventually make the decision to pivot as soon as possible.
The transition from the incubation stage to the acceleration one validates a certain maturity in the customer orientation of the entrepreneur and the start-up. Incubation enables the identification of a first strategic client or a key partner in order to better structure an initial business model. Acceleration builds on this first step to move towards a more ambitious implementation that will make it possible to develop a first portfolio of customers. The evolution of the project during the incubation phase, and then its transition to acceleration, will be all the better if the entrepreneur is able to capitalize on the network to which the incubator/accelerator gives him/her access.
Finally, it can be assumed that there are employees in an organization who have a sort of natural customer orientation at an individual level. These employees can then serve as role models and influence the level of customer orientation of their colleagues or their team (Lam et al. 2010). Empirical studies have confirmed that a leader’s level of customer orientation influences the level of customer orientation of his or her colleagues