As long-time collaborators, CHARGE and Rice Business share a commitment to advancing the understanding of how strategy, employees, and customers intersect to create lasting value. Ahead of the 2025 Rice Customer-Based Strategy Symposium, we spoke with Vikas Mittal, Faculty Director of the Center for Customer-Based Execution & Strategy and J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing at Rice Business.
In this conversation, Professor Mittal explores what makes an organization truly unshakeable — where strategy is not only well designed but also lived every day by employees and valued by customers.
If you had to describe an unshakeable organization in one sentence, what would it be?
An unshakeable organization is one where shareholder rewards result from a strategy rooted in satisfied customers and engaged employees.
In your experience, what distinguishes organizations that successfully live their strategy from those that simply state it?
Companies live their strategy when the strategy is based on customers’ top-two needs and employees spend more than 70% of their time excelling on those needs. In many organizations vague, high-level strategies become meaningless slogans –they are stated platitudes.
How can companies ensure that employees not only understand the strategy but feel personally connected to it?
The connection comes from ensuring the strategy is translated into their daily work and they are held accountable for excelling in their work. They daily work is the lived strategy. For them strategy is not additional work on top of daily work.
You’ve done extensive research on linking customer feedback to financial outcomes. What evidence most strongly supports the idea that a customer-based strategy drives long-term performance?
A recent peer-reviewed paper, based on data from 1.3 million customers and firms shows, customer satisfaction predicts customer retention, pricing power, sales, margins, cash flow, stock returns, and long-term firm value. The open access paper is linked here: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11002-023-09671-w.pdf
Finally, for executives attending the 2025 Symposium, what’s one key takeaway you hope they leave with?
We hope they will understand the power and potential of simplifying strategy planning using a science-driven process and benefitting shareholders, customers, and employees.