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Customer-centricity at the Base of the Pyramid

Key insights from inclusive business practitioners

THE END OF THE BENEFICIARY, THE RETURN OF THE CUSTOMER

Why a shift from ‘beneficiary’ to ‘customer’ has the potential to be one of the greatest paradigm shifts facing the development industry 

If we want the people we serve to become self-reliant, we have to treat them as customers, not beneficiaries. We have to focus on value as they define it, not as we do. We have to give them options and choice. 

We have to ask if what we are doing provides the best value and adapt our work every day. 

We have to make our organizations more permeable to customer demand and feedback. 

Amazon has trained me to be the most sophisticated customer on earth; they have led me on a journey to establish and define value. They have taught me that their job, every day, is to exceed my expectations, to predict my demand, to provide me value, and to advance my quality of life.  

Amazon can make great suggestions about what I might like or need, but ultimately, I click on where I see value. If we want to make people self-reliant, we have to listen like our lives, careers, and the impact we can have depend on it – because they do. We have to be willing to ask if what we are doing now, and how we do it, provides value. International organizations depend on a game of “telephone” to find out what a customer really needs or wants. Messages from the field are filtered, shaped, and sanitized as they make their way back to HQ. 

 Today, there are more than 700 million cell phones in Africa, so there’s no need to rely on that game of telephone anymore. Instead, we can have direct access to customers relying on our programs or who are using our products and services. We can get their feedback, take it seriously, and change what we do based on it...and then we can seek their feedback again. In Silicon Valley they call this endless cycle “user-centered design.”  

But it’s really just good business sense. 

Similar to many businesses, the International Aid Community has our own version of “a store on every corner,” with programs and projects dispersed across the world. And we have a lot of big successes in our history. But complacency, over time, equals obsolescence.  

Organizations that don’t adapt, don’t survive. Borders. Kodak. Blockbuster. They all seemed like unstoppable juggernauts. But the last twenty years have been a time of immense disruption.  

These businesses didn’t think their customers had other options; they felt impervious to competition. But they were wrong. Our customers also face options of aid from different countries and players, and not all of them function with the same motivations as we do.  

We live in a time of unprecedented “purpose,” with more genius and talent being drawn to work that ‘makes a difference.’ And we live in an age of innovation, which brings huge potential. If we can shift our mentality and our programming to demand-driven development, shaped by customer-determined value, we are on the road to self-reliance.  And our pivotal moments won't be the shuttering of doors, but rather celebrations of strategic transitions and new relationships. 

We are in an industry that is greatly shaped and influenced by “expert bias.” It is a delicate walk between knowing what is good for people and responding to prioritized needs of customers, who may have incomplete exposure to the full ecosystem of choices and resources that can influence and improve their choices and lives. We need to err on the side of empowerment, not expert.  

The shift to ‘customer’ will require us to measure impact differently. It will no longer be enough for an organization to simply have confidence in an audit. Instead, metrics will need to demonstrate customer value and user adoption. We need a holistic look at how a country or sector is advancing, while ensuring those metrics are complemented by customer data and feedback to help us understand whether the impact will be sustained by the people themselves.  

It is for these reasons that I am excited about the topic of “customer-centricity.” The contributors in this issue highlight how organizations, in some cases their own, are making the intentional transition from a “beneficiary” to “customer” mind-set. Through their stories and interviews, we meet each of them where they are at on that journey. I believe this psychological shift is potentially one of the most powerful paradigm shifts our industry is facing, and if we make it successfully, individual’s lives can be changed – on their own terms. 

Alexis Bonnell
Alexis Bonnell is the Division Chief of Applied Innovation and Acceleration in the U.S. Global Development Lab of USAID. Alexis has delivered humanitarian and development programming in over 25 countries, in almost every sector from education to stabilisation. Her more than 20 years of experience in management and communications has provided her incredible opportunities to work on/with: Wall Street, “Dot.coms”, Middle East Peace Plan, Afghan and Iraq Elections, global emergency response coordination and major logistics operations. Her focus is how to leverage science, technology, innovation, and partnership for greater impact. Alexis founded the Global Innovation Exchange, and has been lucky enough to see USAID invest in more than 1,000 social innovators and entrepreneurs, changing millions of lives around the world.

featured story

Customer-centricity at the Base of the Pyramid: Key Insights from Inclusive Business Practitioners

In this issue of iBAN’s online magazine, practitioners from the inclusive business world share their insights about challenges and best practices in the realm of customer-centricity. Entrepreneurs tackling wide-ranging issues, from energy access to affordable eye care, all weighed in to share how they view – and act on – “customer-centricity.” Here are their key findings and thoughts.

Dana Gulley

Table of contents

graphic summary

GRAPHIC SUMMARY

A visual summary of key challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurs when addressing the topic of customer-centricity. Learn more about all these aspects by reading this first edition of the newly developed online magazine on Inclusive Business! The…

editorial

THE END OF THE BENEFICIARY, THE RETURN OF THE CUSTOMER

Why a shift from ‘beneficiary’ to ‘customer’ has the potential to be one of the greatest paradigm shifts facing the development industry 

Alexis Bonnell

feature story

Customer-centricity at the Base of the Pyramid: Key Insights from Inclusive Business Practitioners

In this issue of iBAN’s online magazine, practitioners from the inclusive business world share their insights about challenges and best practices in the realm of customer-centricity. Entrepreneurs tackling wide-ranging issues, from energy access to affordable eye care, all weighed in to share how they view – and act on – “customer-centricity.” Here are their key findings and thoughts.

Dana Gulley

Profitably serving the modest-income consumer takes forward, not backward, thinking

Designing profitable businesses for modest-income consumers has been a major challenge for companies for the past thirty years, yet new growth in world consumption will come from this population.

How to put the customer first at the base of the pyramid

The base of the pyramid (BoP) has long been recognised as an untapped market, but the question has now shifted to the more complicated how do we tap into it?.

Putting needs at the centre of product development: lessons learned from a forest honey filter prototype

There is a common phenomenon in product development. A particular product might pass all assessments and quality control, but struggle to be adopted by the intended users, leaving us wondering where it went wrong.

Who are you designing for? Using human-centred design to create inclusive value

Niti Bhan brings a multidisciplinary and multicultural perspective to innovation for the informal economies of the emerging markets of the developing world.

Financial inclusion begins with understanding what drives customers and partners, from individuals and financial institutions to governments and funders

Introduction

Fundación Capital is a social enterprise working to improve the financial lives of millions of people in poverty by designing and delivering solutions that make families more resilient to economic stress.