Читать книгу A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services - Valerie Mathieu - Страница 34

The solution to involve managers in the implementation of a marketing culture, strategies and tools would be to increase their competence in customer orientation. For companies without a marketing department, the customer-focused manager would become the key player in the deployment of a customer culture. The customer-oriented manager does not have to “do the job” of a marketing department, but must have the ambition to fully integrate the customer into his/her vision and actions. The marketing department and customer orientation will never be in competition but ideally in collaboration and synergy.

Increasing the manager’s customer orientation skills also has the advantage of responding to aspirations for autonomy and freedom in relation to what is often perceived as diktats emanating from headquarters and of moving towards greater horizontality. Customer orientation, by valuing the customer and, therefore, the relationship with the other and the human being, gives meaning to the work that the manager often complains of having lost. If the manager’s job no longer inspires dreams¹⁸, wouldn’t enriching it with the confidence that the company has in them for maintaining its most precious asset, the customer, be likely to re-enchant it?