Global customer-centricity audits: a practical framework

 5 questions to test if your strategy is truly customer-centric or just a slogan

Last week, I was sitting in a cafeteria waiting for my son to finish his tennis training so I could take him home. I’m usually less motivated to wait outside in winter, but in September, the weather is still nice. I enjoy sitting on the terrace, with one eye on him training and the other reading or scrolling on my phone.

So there I was, between one serve and the next, when I opened my Evernote. That’s where I save articles that look interesting to read later. One of them that I had pending to read was about LEGO.

LEGO is one of those companies that has something special, liked by kids or adults. In my case, like in many others, I grew up building LEGOs, and I did the same with my kids, where a LEGO set was a very welcome birthday present!

In that article the sinopsis read about how the company rebuilt itself by gaining a deeper understanding of its customers.

That part got my attention.

It was the kind of article where the title and synopsis looked interesting, so when I first saw it, I thought, “I’ll save it and check it later when I have time.”

That’s something I got used to doing years ago, using Evernote as a sort of “read later” app. Many times, when I finally read those saved articles, I find real gems (not always; digital clutter is a real thing in my Evernote!) . The good thing is that this LEGO article was one of the ones landing in the bucket of interesting gem!. When I read the article, I learned about studies about how kids play in the world. I never imagined that LEGO run ethnographic studies to understand how kids worldwide play with their LEGO sets! But now that I think about it, it makes total sense. The article, here’s the link , explained how LEGO invested in studying play patterns across cultures and how it built platforms for fans to co-create the brand’s future.

Another thing that caught my attention, when curiosity pushed me to dig deeper into LEGO’s strategy, is their portal LEGO Ideas. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can submit ideas for new LEGO sets. If a proposal gets 10,000 votes, LEGO reviews it for production, and many of those designs have been chosen! Sets like Women of NASA and The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine came directly from customers. LEGO did more than listen to customers as it turns their voices into ideas for innovation in its sets.

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LEGO offers us the opportunity to be designers!

This made me reflect on how truly customer-centric the company is. And that’s exactly what I want to explore in today’s article, companies that are genuinely customer-centric versus those that only say they are 😳

The Customer-Centricity claim

 Customer-centricity is everywhere in corporate language. It appears on company websites, annual reports, and all-hands meetings. Leaders say, “We put customers first,”. Teams track NPS, customer satisfaction surveys, and customer journeys.

 But sadly, what I’ve seen many times in my career as a localization professional is that, in practice, customer-centricity often stops at English.

 Surveys and focus groups are usually run in the US or the UK. The results are treated as if they represent the entire customer base. Dashboards look healthy, product owners feel reassured, and the company can say it is listening. But the majority of its global customers remain unheard.

The illusion of listening

 This creates an illusion of customer-centricity. Companies do listen, but only to a narrow slice of their audience.

The methods themselves ,surveys, NPS, focus groups ,are valuable. But they are not enough when they are limited to English-speaking markets.

Why an audit matters

 A global customer-centricity audit is a way to test whether the customer promise is real everywhere, not just in the headquarters’ home markets.

 Without it, companies face three predictable risks:

• Blind spots: what works in one culture fails in another.

• Missed opportunities: international markets, often the biggest growth drivers, are overlooked.

• Broken promises: customers hear “we care” but don’t feel it in their market.

 From my experience, an audit is about learning. It highlights the gaps, and very often, those gaps reveal the biggest opportunities. It’s true that just the word audit sounds scary! But in audits or reviews (we should come up with a less scary name!) interesting insights tend to appear …

A practical framework: 5 audit questions

 So, let’s get practical! Here is a simple framework any company can use to determine whether it is truly customer-centric worldwide.

Each question is designed to reveal a common blind spot that can distort decision-making.

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Clich HERE to download the infographic

1.     Coverage

 Ask: Are we gathering insights across enough markets to call our view global?

 Customer-centricity cannot be claimed if insights come only from one or two core markets. A company may know its US or UK customers very well, but that tells us little about customers in Asia, Latin America, or Africa.

 2. Representation

Ask: Do international voices make it to the table when product roadmaps are discussed?

 Collecting local feedback is one thing; ensuring that it influences decision-making is another. Too often, insights from smaller or newer markets are filtered out before strategy is set.

 3. Consistency

Ask: Do all our markets receive the same level of research rigor, even if methods vary?

 Many organizations apply rigorous research methods in their home market, while giving only light treatment to others. This creates an uneven standard of listening.

 4. Voice

Ask: Are we treating localization insights as part of the customer voice, or dismissing them as translation issues?

Localization teams often flag cultural mismatches or confusing copy, but their feedback is treated as operational noise rather than customer intelligence. This is a wasted opportunity.?

 5. Accountability

Ask: Who in leadership is explicitly accountable for ensuring that our customer promise holds true across all markets?

Without clear ownership, global customer-centricity becomes everyone’s job and therefore no one’s responsibility

 The result of an audit is not a pass/fail grade. It is a map of where the company is strong and where it is weak.

Some companies may have broad coverage but poor voice adaption. Others may collect feedback widely but lack accountability. Whatever the case, the gaps are not failures; they are insights into where the promise of customer-centricity is most vulnerable.

 The perception of cost

 One of the most common objections I hear from senior leaders or product teams is cost. Expanding research beyond English markets sounds expensive, and leaders imagine multiplying budgets by ten. But the truth is that companies already have listening channels built into their localization workflows. Every time a local team flags confusing copy, highlights a cultural mismatch, or raises a usability issue, they are providing customer insight.

The perception is that this kind of listening is expensive. The reality is that ignoring it is what costs the most.

When I talk about customer-centricity, I often leave people with a few questions to reflect on. They’re not questions to answer on the spot, but seeds I like to plant in their heads:

·       Whose voices are we really hearing?

·       Why do we assume English-speaking preferences represent the world?

·       Who is truly responsible for making sure customer-centricity goes beyond English and becomes global?

 Conclusion

 Customer-centricity has become a corporate buzzword. But customers are not buzzwords. They are people in many different markets, each with their own ways of experiencing products.

 A global customer-centricity audit is a way to test whether your company’s promises are real everywhere, not just at headquarters. It does not require perfection. It requires honesty and the willingness to act on what you find.

 Companies that take this seriously will not only avoid mistakes. They will earn trust in markets where trust is still being built. They will discover growth opportunities that English-centric research will never show them. And they will prove that customer-centricity is more than a phrase on a PowerPoint slide.

@yolocalizo