I’ve been evaluating and judging companies on their ‘customer centricity’ for nearly eight years now, but on Monday at the 2008 National Business Awards I found myself in a situation I’ve never faced before. How do you evaluate companies who have all developed ‘good practice’ customer relationship management?

All four candidates this year in the Customer Focus Award had a sound customer value proposition, a passion for personalising customer service, they involved their staff in collaborative teams, they asked for customer opinions, they know what proportion of their results are attributable to their customer focus, and they all link their services into their communities. They were truly an inspiration.

No longer was it a question of separating sheep from goats, for the first time I was into grading the quality of ‘wool’; so what was I looking for? I decided on four criteria:-

1. How far they had pulled down the walls of the company and let customers in - did they have conversations with them, did they collaborate with them?

2. OK, they had put in place excellent customer processes but how were they going to sustain that excellence. How did they look ahead, what infrastructure was there for innovation in solving customer problems and managing change?

3. What language did they talk in, what clues did they give as to culture and leadership. Did they tell me about their customer community with cost saving being the number one benefit? It is hard to change to outside- in language, if you are not truly outside-in. It’s a sure sign of customer focus.

4. How was customer focus driving value and resource management in the company? What waste had been eliminated, what value added?