Ron Kaufmann challenges the myth of customer-centricity, urging leaders to ask better questions about value, culture, and the future of service.
Talk of “customer-centricity” is everywhere—on glossy slides, in quarterly reports, and on company websites. Yet when the numbers tighten, service is often the first line item to disappear. In this wide-ranging conversation, Ron Kaufman refuses the false choice between marketing and meaning. He reframes the debate: the real question for leaders is not whether service matters, but *what kind* of value a business chooses to create.
Kaufman walks us through the trade-offs few executives name aloud. Some companies deliberately deliver the bare minimum—and that can be a defensible business model if low price and predictability are the product. Others pursue premium trust and long-term loyalty, betting that exceptional service will produce sustainable margins and advocacy. The difference is strategic, not moral.
From metrics to AI to workplace culture, Kaufman refuses to settle for quick answers. He urges leaders to stop driving by looking in the rearview mirror—NPS and CSAT tell you how you performed yesterday; they don’t tell you what to do tomorrow. Instead, he proposes forward-looking measures, humane automation, and a leadership shift from “take personal responsibility” to “create shared—and even historic—responsibility.” Read on for a pragmatic guide to making service more than a slogan: a lever for growth, resilience, and genuine human care.
Excerpts from the interview;
Is corporate “customer-centricity” genuine, or does the pressure of quarterly earnings still relegate service excellence to a mere marketing slogan?
Your question frames it as a binary—either companies are genuinely committed, or it’s merely a slogan. But it’s rarely that simple.
The fundamental distinction is this: Is the company trying to create the bare minimum value required to meet its goals, or is it trying to make as much value as possible?
Some businesses deliberately offer the bare minimum because their customers want low price and predictability, not excellence. That can be a valid model. Others want to be the preferred provider—charging premium pricing, earning higher margins, building trust, and inspiring referrals.
Both are legitimate. Not every business must aspire to “service excellence.” But from a sustainability and long-term profitability standpoint, I naturally have an opinion—I specialize in customer experience, after all. Still, the question isn’t “marketing slogan or excellence”; it’s “What is the company trying to achieve?”
In an era obsessed with speed and automation, does the drive for efficiency undermine authentic human service? Can companies truly ‘care’ at scale?
Efficiency and humanity aren’t opposites—you need both. Efficiency improves accuracy, reduces costs, and increases consistency. But caring at scale means addressing fundamental human needs.
Think about running a city or country: education, healthcare, mental health, elder care, and environmental wellbeing. That’s “caring at scale.” Of course, you need efficiency—but not at the cost of empathy.
The challenge is knowing when the human element is essential. In an emergency room, for example, efficiency is paramount; however, once the crisis is stabilized, empathy matters—toward patients and their families. Efficiency without humanity dehumanizes. Humanity without efficiency collapses.
In toxic, high-burnout cultures, is it naive to expect employees to deliver exceptional service? Where is the breaking point between internal neglect and customer-facing excellence?
It isn’t naive—it’s absurd. If the workplace is toxic, expecting employees to “go the extra mile” is unrealistic.
But which breaking point are we talking about?
- When do customers stop coming back?
- When do they publicly attack your reputation?
- When employees quit en masse?
- Or when the organization’s culture itself collapses?
Each breaking point is different.
That’s why leaders must return to the core questions:
What is the purpose of our company? What kind of place do we want this to be?
If your mission is delivering emergency services at scale, culture may not be the top priority during a crisis. However, in most businesses, ignoring culture is a swift path to decline.
Having consulted with global giants, what is the most common blind spot that senior leaders refuse to acknowledge when trying to fix a failing service culture?
The phrase “failing service culture” reveals something important: It used to work. There was a time when the culture was healthy.
Leaders often jump straight to “What do we do now?” instead of asking:
- When did this culture thrive?
- What changed?
- What stopped working?
- What needs to be restarted, rebuilt, or reinvented?
If you’re a new CEO, you can’t bulldoze the past without understanding the people who lived it. And if you were part of the leadership when the culture began to decline, you need even more honesty.
The answers lie in the history that leaders often avoid confronting.
Are we fooling ourselves with service metrics like NPS and CSAT? If these don’t truly capture service quality, what should replace them?
Service quality isn’t hard to quantify—we’ve created endless metrics: CSAT, customer effort score, NPS, sentiment analysis, and more. The problem isn’t measurement; it’s orientation. Most of these metrics ask: How did we do?
They look backward.
Companies need forward-looking metrics—ones that answer:
What should we do next? What will create more value?
For example, instead of “How likely are you to recommend us?” I’d ask:
“Have you recommended us? Why? What did the other person need?”
I developed something called the Customer Partnership Score, which asks questions like:
- What do you want us to continue doing?
- What are we doing that no longer matters?
- What are we not doing that you would pay for?
These questions build the future, not report the past.
Another useful model is the Wallet Allocation Score, which asks: “How much of your total spend are we getting—and why not more?” Banks, especially, should pay attention to that.
As AI reshapes service, at what point does automation—from chatbots to predictive analytics—become a liability rather than a solution for customers who demand human interaction?
There are three situations where a bot should not lead the experience:
- First-time service or platform migration.
When someone uses a new system—banking apps, AI tools, onboarding platforms—they often need a human to guide them once, confidently and encouragingly. - When something goes wrong.
A frustrated customer stuck in a loop should immediately reach a human—one fully briefed by the technology on what the customer has already tried. - When genuine human empathy is required.
HR crises, medical issues, family emergencies—these cannot be handed to a bot.
AI should support service, not substitute for humanity.
When leadership dictates a ‘one-size-fits-all’ service strategy, how should you challenge them, especially when local teams warn that it fails across diverse borders and cultures?
This is a question about the distinction between standards and standardization.
A global company once mandated that every office send customers chocolate chip cookies because one American client had a particular fondness for them. But in Japan, China, Australia, Eastern Europe, cookies weren’t the right cultural gesture.
If the CEO had said, “Recreate the emotion this gesture evoked, within your culture,” that would have worked. Leaders should set the standard of experience, not the method of achieving it.
Local teams understand cultural nuance. Ignoring them guarantees missteps.
Looking back on decades of work, is there a core service principle you would refine or completely rethink today? What changed your perspective?
This was your best question—and yes, there is.
For 30 years, I taught the principle of TPR: Take Personal Responsibility.
It meant stepping beyond blame, shame, and excuses.
However, in recent years, I’ve come to realize that personal responsibility isn’t enough.
Today I emphasize:
- CSR: Create Shared Responsibility.
Leaders must create a space where teams move forward together. Not top-down, but collective.
And beyond that:
- GHR: Generate Historic Responsibility.
Invite people to be part of a moment future generations will point to and say, “That’s when it changed.”
Plant the forest, even if you won’t live to see the trees.
That’s the evolution of leadership today.
