It’s a bit amusing that “customer centricity” is now a hot topic. Most hot topics last about 18 months and then turn into “occasionally useful approaches” (at best). But customer centricity is actually enduring–and critical. As the great Peter Drucker pointed out, the purpose of any business is to create a customer. What other aspect of the business deserves more attention, all the way to the top of the organization?

Great CEOs instantiate that concept, incessantly. Ken Fine captures some excellent examples in a recent Fast Company Post:

• Apple’s Tim Cook reads and sometimes replies to as many as  hundred customer emails every day.
• Jeff Bezos has been known to forward emails from unhappy customers to members of his team, together with a demand that the issue be fixed within hours.
• Fine himself has been in meetings with CEOs who play customer call center recordings (the good and bad) for their top teams to enjoy–or cringe over.

“Customer centricity” happens when CEOs take it that seriously. If Apple’s CEO has time to read up to a hundred customer emails a day ….