What If Your Customer Were in the Room?

Every business, organization, or team has meetings.  Some have way too many.  But here’s a question I’ve been sitting with lately…and maybe you should, too:

What would happen if your customer were in the room with you during your meeting?

Not as the subject of a report.  Not as a statistic in a PowerPoint.  But as a real person. Watching. Listening.

Would they feel seen and served by the way your team talks, decides, and collaborates?  Or would they be wondering what all the fuss was about?

Producer-Centric vs. Customer-Centric

I’ve touched on this before, but most meetings (and honestly, most team conversations) are producer-centric rather than customer-centric.  That means they’re designed around what we need:

• What we have to get done
• What we want to say
• What we think is important

I’m not saying that’s always wrong. Internal coordination is necessary. But when it becomes the default lens when every meeting is built around internal needs instead of external value, we start to lose our way.

We drift into working hard on things that don’t matter.  We make decisions based on convenience, preference, or process instead of purpose.  And worst of all? We start to mistake motion for meaning.

A Simple Hack: Leave a Chair for the Customer

Here’s a little trick I sometimes use when facilitating strategy sessions or cross-functional meetings:

I leave an empty chair at the table and label it “Customer.”  (I might even put a picture of an actual customer at their seat at the table!)

It’s a physical reminder that the customer should always have a presence, even if they’re not literally in the room.  Try it sometime. It changes things.

You’ll notice people pause before charging ahead with an idea.
You’ll hear someone ask, “But how does this help the customer?”
You may even start to prioritize differently — and with better results.

There are other things you can do before, during, and after each meeting:

• Before the Meeting: Ask the Right Questions.  What if, before you even set your agenda, you asked:

• • “What would be valuable to the customer as an outcome of this meeting?”
  • “Are we solving a problem the customer actually has or just one that’s annoying to us?”
  • “How does this topic tie back to delivering a better product, service, or experience?”

That mindset shift — from internal check-the-box to external value creation — is subtle but powerful.
And it sets the tone for a meeting that matters.

• During the Meeting: Be the Customer Advocate.  Every team needs someone who plays the role of customer advocate. That person (and honestly, it should rotate) is there to speak on behalf of the customer when things start getting too insular.  It doesn’t have to be formal. Just someone willing to ask:

• • “What would our customer say if they heard that?”
  • “Would this decision make sense to them?”
  • “Are we moving toward something they’ll care about?”

It keeps the team grounded. And focused. And accountable.

• After the Meeting: Debrief with the Customer in Mind.  Most teams don’t debrief meetings at all — but high-performance teams do. And the best teams ask:

• • Did we make progress that will benefit the customer?
  • Did we use our time in a way that reflects our purpose?
  • If our customer had been watching, would they be impressed? Or confused?

Because the truth is that they’re watching all the time.  Not from inside the meeting room, but through the results you produce.  The experience you deliver.  The promises you keep (or don’t).

The Final Litmus Test. 

If your customer had been in your last meeting, would they:

• Thank you for spending time on something that helps them?
• Feel proud to be working with your team?
• Walk away confident that you’ve got their back?

Or would they shake their head and wonder what all that energy was for?

We don’t need to put customers in every meeting. But we do need to keep them at the center of our decisions. Because when teams are truly customer-centric, not just in mission statements but in daily conversations, that’s when the magic happens.

High performance starts with clarity.  And clarity comes from remembering why we’re here in the first place.

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