It's easy to say that your organization is "customer focused" -- and few people these days dare say anything but. The reality of customer power has been pounded into us all so relentlessly in recent years that we all sing the same tune about being customer-centric, customer-driven, customer-obsessed, or some rhetorical variation thereof.

As John Hagel noted recently, however, "the practice rarely matches the rhetoric."

Hagel suggests three fundamental questions to test the reality of customer focus:

1. Who in the organization holds real decision-making power? Is it the organization that manages relationships with the customer or is it some other group?
   
2. What are the primary measures of performance for the firm?
   
3. What is the primary focus of the brand promise of the company?
   

Typically, as Hagel suggests, the answers to these questions move quickly away from real customer focus. On the power front, few companies even have a senior executive or team accountable for managing customer relationships end-to-end (i.e., integrating and encompassing at least marketing, sales, and support).

Regarding performance, metrics around product, business unit, and overall corporate performance more commonly drive  the business than customer profitably or other customer-oriented financial metrics.

As for brand promise, few companies put customer responsiveness, satisfaction, and/or relationships ahead of product and market orientation (e.g., we provide the best products or lead this or that particular market).

So where does your organization stand? On our side, I like to to think we're working hard on all three fronts, but, truth be told, we've still got a ways to go. Hagel's questions provide a sobering test, and answering them honestly creates a much better sense of the reality than any number of odes to the customer from the marketing song book.