Customer Focus, Customer Orientation, and Customer Centering—What’s the Difference?
An important discovery for most companies is that focusing on customer needs and problems is the first and easiest step on the path to customer-centric business orientation. Customer wishes then accepted are usually those fitting neatly into the previous corporate goal. The company does not yet want to change its entire mission statement, but instead use the focus on the customer as a marketing strategy. This strategy is ideal for testing whether the focus on the customer generates positive feedback and promises greater success. If this is the case, further steps can be taken on the way to increasing customer focus.

Customer focus is thus only the beginning of a paradigm shift in corporate culture. This becomes clear after a detailed examination of the two concepts of customer orientation and customer centering, which we deal with in detail in further articles.
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Customer orientation: The term customer orientation is sometimes used as a synonym for focus on the customer, but orientation goes much further. Here, the meaning of 'focusing on something' is rather confusing. This is because customer orientation is also focused on the customer. However, the customer is not only a focal point, but also a guiding and decisive factor. These influence the methods used whilst further pushing the customer into the center of the stage, and in conjunction with other aspects, direct the decision-making process. In addition, customer focus is a rather static, almost passive strategy: You look closely at customer wishes, but conclusions drawn from these do not make circles as wide as with actively designed customer orientation. Therefore, one should see and use these terms as separately as possible, especially in marketing.
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Customer centering: Customer centering goes one step further than customer orientation—here, the company aligns itself holistically with its clients and takes into account their unspoken needs. In addition, customer centering influences the operation down to its mission statement, even if this necessitates adapting it.
So you can look at it as follows—focusing on the customer is the first step on the way to customer orientation. If this has been achieved, the company can ultimately focus on the goal of customer centering. Alternately, first, you look at the customer and his known needs, then you use them as a guide for the further development of the business model, and at the end the whole company and its mission statement completely aligns with the buyer. But where does this change of heart from pure product advertising to focusing on the customer come from?