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This paper aims: to provide practical insights into how organisations can become more customer‐focussed; to share with researchers and organisations a framework that can be used to research “customer focus culture” and assess an organisation's level of customer focus; to describe how New Zealand's first consortium approach to benchmarking was managed so that others interested in planning a consortium study can learn from this experience.

The benchmarking study was conducted by member organisations of the New Zealand Benchmarking Club and facilitated by a doctoral student from Massey University's Centre for Organisational Excellence Research. The methodology involved conducting an extensive literature review to identify national and international best practices in customer focus, developing a survey that was completed by 32 potential best practice organisations, and selecting seven of these organisations for a best practice visit.

A framework for the examination of customer‐focused culture was developed and the findings from the study reveal practical “new” insights into best practices in customer focus.

Benefits would have been gained from extending the study to include a larger international group seeking further examples of good‐to‐best practices.

Insights into how organisations can become customer‐focused; a framework that can be used by researchers to research “customer focus culture” and by organisations to assess their level of customer focus; insights into how to run a benchmarking study.

This paper reports on the first consortium approach to benchmarking that has been used within New Zealand; it shares some of the latest best practices in customer focus; a customer focus culture framework has been developed – the first of which the authors are aware.