Customer orientation
From need to trust and action.
Competency 8: Customer orientation
Customer orientation is the ability to recognise the questions, wishes, needs and interests of internal and external customers and act appropriately. Operationally, people help customers carefully and reliably in direct contact. Tactically, needs are translated into proposals, advice and coordination. Strategically, customer information is used to strengthen relationships and service and encourage others to work with a customer focus. The competency connects attention to others with quality, feasibility and responsibility.
A familiar workplace situation
Petra works as an adviser at a medium sized organisation. A regular customer calls about another delivery that has failed to arrive on time. He has had to adjust his own schedule and wants to know how Petra will prevent this from happening again. The account manager previously promised that the problems had been resolved. Meanwhile, the logistics department is still investigating what is going wrong.
Petra wants to respond carefully. She asks for the order number, checks the agreements and explains that she first needs to establish internally what happened. Her intention is to be reliable: no incorrect answer and no promise the organisation cannot keep. Yet the customer becomes more irritated. He experiences her questions as another obstacle, while first wanting to feel that someone understands what the repeated delay means for him.
A colleague does not take over the conversation but helps Petra choose a different sequence. First, she acknowledges the consequences for the customer. Then she clarifies what she can do now, whom she will involve and when the customer will receive an update. She subsequently investigates the cause and a feasible solution. Afterwards, the team discusses why the same complaint keeps recurring.
Where was the customer orientation here: in the contact, the solution or preventing the next complaint? The connection between these three is what makes the difference.
What is customer orientation?
Nieuwenhuis defines customer orientation as responding to and meeting the questions, wishes, needs and interests of internal and external customers. He lists service orientation as a synonym (Nieuwenhuis, 2010). The definition therefore encompasses more than a friendly conversation. It requires understanding whom the work should benefit and which response is appropriate in the situation.
An external customer buys a product, uses a service or receives support. An internal customer may be a colleague or department whose work depends on information, advice or a delivery. The roles differ, but the behavioural challenge remains recognisable: understanding what others need, aligning expectations and ensuring agreements are actually fulfilled.
This process comprises four connected elements. First, the question is heard and explored. Next, needs and interests are distinguished from the solution customers propose themselves. Then the professional weighs what is substantively, organisationally and professionally responsible. Finally, action follows with clear agreements and appropriate follow-up. Listening without follow-up remains attention without results. A solution without understanding may solve the wrong problem.
Customer orientation therefore differs from customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is a possible customer response; customer orientation describes the behaviour through which people take customers’ needs seriously. A carefully considered decision may temporarily disappoint, for example when a request is not feasible. Conversely, customers may be satisfied with a promise that later proves impossible to keep. The quality of the competency becomes visible in the combination of attention, reasoning and reliability.
Professional customer focus also includes boundaries. In healthcare, public services and internal advisory work, wishes must be weighed alongside professional standards, equal treatment and others’ interests. The question is always how to be helpful within what is responsible and achievable. Sometimes this requires a tailored approach. Sometimes it requires a clear no, with an explanation and a useful alternative.
A role, a skill or a behavioural competency?
More than a job role
Customer orientation is often associated with customer service, sales, account management, healthcare or hospitality. These roles offer many opportunities to demonstrate it, but a job title does not prove customer focused behaviour. A finance specialist, recruiter, IT employee or policy adviser can also explore internal needs, clarify agreements and improve service. The form needed depends on the role and the consequences of the actions taken.
More than a single skill
Listening helps understand a question. Empathy helps recognise consequences and emotions. Communication skills clarify expectations and next steps. Organisational awareness connects customer needs to possibilities, interests and processes. Integrity, quality orientation and results orientation ensure promises are honest and fulfilled. None of these skills alone constitutes customer focus. A good listener may forget follow-up; a fast problem solver may miss an essential need.
A behavioural competency
As a behavioural competency, customer orientation becomes visible in a recurring combination of knowledge, motivation, skills and context. People investigate needs, choose an appropriate response, coordinate internally, monitor agreements and use feedback to improve service. For HR and recruitment, what matters most is the behaviour the role requires and the specific situations in which someone has demonstrated it. Whether people come across as pleasant is too limited a question.
Scientific foundations
Research uses several concepts related to customer orientation: customer oriented selling behaviour, service employees’ customer orientation, service climate and market orientation. These concepts overlap but do not measure exactly the same thing. Research into sales interactions, for example, does not automatically validate a competency profile for internal service. The literature mainly helps explain which behaviours and conditions may be valuable.
1. Understanding needs and genuinely helping customers
Saxe and Weitz (1982) developed the SOCO scale for customer oriented selling behaviour. They found associations with salespeople’s ability to help customers and the quality of the customer relationship. This research places customers’ interests alongside the salesperson’s own sales goal. For the broader competency, the lesson is that a professional interaction becomes customer focused when it fits the need and helps customers make an appropriate choice.
2. Motivation, skills and perceived decision making latitude
Hennig-Thurau and Thurau (2003) describe service employees’ customer orientation through three connected dimensions: motivation to help customers, customer oriented skills and perceived decision making authority. This is a conceptual framework. It explains why good intentions alone are insufficient. Employees may want to help but lack the skills or latitude to realise a solution. Development must therefore also address authority and support.
3. The organisation helps determine what becomes visible
Schneider, White and Paul (1998) investigated the relationship between service climate and service quality as perceived by customers. Their findings support the importance of conditions that help employees provide good service. Customer focus thus also becomes an organisational question: which priorities, tools and working methods enable it? The research does not prove that every individual complaint is caused by culture. It does underline that behaviour cannot be assessed separately from the work environment.
4. Job satisfaction and customer focus are related
Donavan, Brown and Mowen (2004) investigated how service employees’ customer orientation relates to perceived job fit, job satisfaction, organisational commitment and extra helpful behaviour. In a meta-analysis, Brown and Lam (2008) found positive associations between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and perceived service quality. These studies reveal connections between work experience and service. They do not justify a simple chain in which customer focus automatically causes happiness at work, or vice versa.
5. Effectiveness requires boundaries and protection
Homburg, Müller and Klarmann (2011) found an inverted U-shaped relationship between customer orientation and sales performance in sales interactions, while customer attitudes continued to improve at higher levels of customer orientation. In that context, more customer orientation did not produce unlimited improvements in sales performance. Grandey (2000) approaches emotional labour as emotion regulation at work. In a meta-analysis, Wu et al. (2023) connect customer mistreatment to adverse emotions, work attitudes and behaviour. These lines of research support the importance of professional boundaries and attention to the demands of customer contact.
Research insight
Customer focus gains meaning when understanding needs, appropriate action, feasibility and a supportive environment come together. The literature describes different mechanisms and contexts. It does not establish that one score, conversation technique or personality pattern alone guarantees good service.
Why this competency has so much impact
For employees: meaning, latitude to act and demands
Helping someone move forward can reveal why the work matters. An unclear question becomes understandable, a problem is solved or a customer regains an overview. This can contribute to fulfilment and perceived meaning. The associations with job satisfaction found by Donavan and colleagues support this relevance, without reducing happiness at work to one competency.
The same attention to others can become demanding when people have little influence over the outcome. An employee absorbs frustration but cannot repair a system error. An adviser sees an appropriate solution but lacks sufficient authority. A service professional must stay calm while a customer crosses personal boundaries. The practical implication of the literature is therefore that customer focus appears especially sustainable when employees experience sufficient support, realistic agreements and latitude to act.
For the team: handovers and shared learning
Customers experience service as a whole. Internally, their question may pass through several departments. When information is lost, agreements conflict or nobody retains ownership, a series of friendly conversations is insufficient. Customer focus therefore requires teams to share relevant information, clarify responsibilities and investigate problems together.
Learning from complaints also requires a climate in which employees feel able to name mistakes and obstacles. Edmondson (1999) connects psychological safety to learning behaviour in teams. Applied to customer focus, a recurring complaint needs to become useful information. When reporting mainly leads to questions of blame, the team may lose sight of what obstructs service.
For the organisation: from isolated service to customer value
At organisational level, customer focus helps investigate which needs recur and which practices should change. A good solution for one customer may point to a broader improvement. Conversely, an attractive service offering can become unsustainable when capacity, quality or financial arrangements do not fit. Customer value therefore requires balancing the customer’s experience with the conditions needed to sustain reliable service.
The competency works within a network
Understanding needs
Listening, empathy, analytical ability and communication skills help explore the question, its consequences and the underlying need.
Coordinating responsibly
Organisational awareness, integrity, flexibility and decisiveness help weigh interests and set professional boundaries around possibilities.
Delivering reliably and improving
Initiative, results orientation, quality orientation, collaboration and networking support follow-up, relationship management and learning from customer information.
These connections are widely recognisable. The combination carrying most weight varies by person, role and situation. Warm contact cannot permanently compensate for a lack of follow-up. A good analysis cannot compensate for customers never hearing what the next step is either.
Why organisations often misjudge this competency
Organisations easily confuse customer focus with friendliness, speed, customer satisfaction or willingness to do extra work. These signals can be valuable, but individually they provide a limited picture. A fast response may be substantively useless. A satisfied customer may benefit from an exception that disadvantages others. An employee may absorb extra work while the process itself never improves.
A second error is attributing outcomes entirely to the employee. Waiting times, product quality, staffing and decision rules affect the customer experience. Assess what people did within their possibilities too: did they investigate the need, clarify expectations, fulfil an agreement and pass on an obstacle promptly? Otherwise, a system problem may be interpreted as a personal shortcoming.
A third error is equating customer focus with agreement. People who honestly discuss an unfeasible request may be acting carefully. Quality then lies in understanding the interest, explaining the boundary and offering an appropriate next step. Customer mistreatment does not need to be accepted to remain customer focused.
In selection, a concrete case is more useful than asking whether someone is customer focused. Ask candidates to respond to a complaint, a contradictory internal agreement or a request outside their authority. Ask what information they need, what they communicate immediately, whom they involve and how they organise follow-up. This reveals how contact, judgement and delivery come together.
The three levels of customer focus
Nieuwenhuis distinguishes operational, tactical and strategic behaviour. Operationally, the emphasis lies on service oriented behaviour in direct contact. Tactically, it concerns actively contributing ideas and advice. Strategically, it concerns strengthening customer relationships and service and encouraging others to work with a customer focus (Nieuwenhuis, 2010).
Operational
Central question: how do I help the customer carefully and reliably now? The focus lies on attention, clear agreements, concrete action, quality and follow-up.
Tactical
Central question: how do I translate the need into an appropriate and feasible solution? The focus lies on advice, customer knowledge, coordination, quality improvement and relationship management.
Strategic
Central question: how do we strengthen customer value and the organisation’s capacity to work with a customer focus? The focus lies on patterns, lasting relationships, improvement concepts and supporting others.
The levels differ in scope, context, time horizon and complexity. They do not represent a ranking in value. People can also contribute to structural service improvements without an executive role.
Operational customer focus
At the operational level, people are helpful when questions arise, take concrete action quickly and appropriately, monitor quality and maintain honest contact. Nieuwenhuis’s description includes clear agreements about service, quality and delivery. The behaviour stays close to everyday interaction but goes beyond politeness.
Visible behaviour includes listening first, checking relevant information and explaining what happens next. Employees also state what is not yet known and when clarity will follow. Where necessary, a colleague is involved without customers having to work out the internal route themselves. The connection to research into customer oriented behaviour lies mainly in translating understanding of needs into actual help.
Main strength
The main strength is reliability in the moment. Customers notice that their question has been received, its consequences understood and someone is taking responsibility for the agreed next step.
Relevant pitfall
The pitfall is superficial service: responding kindly without exploring the need, promising something too quickly or forwarding a question without follow-up. Analysing for too long without acknowledgement can also create distance. Commitment does not need to be effusive, but it does need to become perceptible.
Practical example
A customer reports an incorrect invoice. The employee summarises the problem, checks which payment deadline applies and explains when the correction will be confirmed. If immediate repair is impossible, the employee makes a feasible follow-up agreement. The customer does not need to keep telling the story again.
Tactical customer focus
At the tactical level, people proactively offer appropriate proposals and actively think along with customers. Nieuwenhuis’s description includes a helpful and advisory attitude, customer knowledge, customer satisfaction, quality improvement and maintaining existing and potential relationships.
This level requires distinguishing the requested solution from the underlying need. Customers may ask for a discount, for example, while mainly seeking certainty about delivery. Professionals explore options, weigh interests and coordinate internally. Perceived decision making latitude matters here: Hennig-Thurau and Thurau’s framework helps explain why good advice stalls when nobody has authority to implement it.
Main strength
The main strength is translation. Tactical customer focus connects what customers need to what the organisation can responsibly deliver. This produces proposals that fit substantively and are achievable.
Relevant pitfall
The pitfall is advising too quickly or taking over too much responsibility. A substantively strong solution may inspire little trust when customers do not yet feel heard. Conversely, intensive consideration can lead to tailored arrangements that are internally unsustainable. Appropriate advice therefore also requires discussing expectations, boundaries and ownership.
Practical example
A client wants a detailed weekly report. The adviser asks which decisions it should support and discovers that a brief overview with three indicators would help more. She coordinates the information need with the operational department and agrees on an evaluation moment. The proposal provides customer value and reduces unnecessary work.
Strategic customer focus
At the strategic level, people encourage others to optimise service. Nieuwenhuis’s description includes hearing the question behind the question, seeing possibilities and limitations, translating customer information into a realistic concept with added value, strengthening relationships and enabling others to act with a customer focus.
This behaviour connects individual experiences to patterns. Which questions recur? Which customers struggle to find their way? Where do different channels contradict one another? And which improvement helps several customers at once? Research into service climate is relevant here: structural quality requires conditions supporting customer focused behaviour alongside individual willingness.
Main strength
The main strength is structural improvement. Strategic customer focus uses service information to substantiate choices about processes, collaboration and relationships and help others act more effectively.
Relevant pitfall
The pitfall is articulating a customer focused ambition without connecting it to delivery. Dashboards and customer journeys can provide an overview, but they lack meaning when employees cannot report problems or implement improvements. The wishes of the most visible customers may also carry disproportionate weight while other needs remain unseen.
Practical example
A service team notices customers repeatedly calling about an application’s status. The team leader investigates where information is missing, involves the process owner and organises consistent status messages. Employees receive a clear escalation route. Results are examined through customer feedback and process data, so improvement does not remain an assumption.
The three levels reinforce one another
Operational customer focus reveals what customers experience and ensures reliable contact. Tactical customer focus translates needs into feasible solutions. Strategic customer focus uses recurring signals to improve service, relationships and support. Information needs to move in both directions: from customer contact to choices and from those choices back to daily delivery.
Extensive operational attention without tactical coordination can produce warm contact with contradictory promises. Strong tactical ability without operational attention can produce substantively good advice that feels distant. Strategic plans disconnected from everyday experiences can sound customer focused while customers notice little improvement.
The combination does not need to be maximally present in one person. Teams can distribute the levels and complement one another. They must then clarify who gathers signals, who coordinates proposals and who can address structural obstacles. The development question therefore also concerns how the organisation connects these contributions.
Effective use starts with the right fit
Different roles require different emphases. Operational reliability is essential in many direct service roles. Advisory work, internal service and account management often require considerable tactical coordination. Roles responsible for service, product development or organisational policy more often require strategic improvement. These emphases are not mutually exclusive: employees in direct customer contact can recognise important patterns, while managers also need to respond carefully themselves.
In Trait Activation Theory, Tett and Burnett (2003) describe how situations can activate or constrain personality traits and behaviour. Applied to customer focus, the same employee may experience more room to contribute ideas in one environment than another. A system rewarding only conversation time sends different signals from a team centred on appropriate solutions and reliable follow-up.
Person and role
Do interests, skills and behavioural preferences fit the customer questions and responsibilities? Also examine which behaviour someone can develop and how much emotional demand the role involves.
Team and manager
Can people ask for help, discuss dilemmas and hand over information? Managers need to clarify the available latitude and when they provide protection or a decision.
Processes and organisation
Do information, capacity, authority and rewards support the desired service? A customer focused promise requires conditions in which employees can fulfil it.
A mismatch therefore does not automatically constitute a judgement about the person. People can be careful and helpful yet struggle in a role with constant conflict, insufficient decision making latitude or inadequate information. A profile helps investigate these tensions; concrete situations reveal what is actually happening.
Why customer focus matters today
Digitalisation and AI change how customers seek information and obtain help. More channels offer convenience but also require coherence. Customers who have supplied information digitally expect employees to build on it. When information does not travel with them, customers must solve the organisation’s internal problem by telling their story again.
PwC (2025) reports that 70% of surveyed executives believe customer expectations are changing faster than their organisation can keep up. In the same US study, 52% of consumers say they stopped buying or using something because of a bad experience with products or services. For bad customer experiences online or in person, the figure is 29%. These categories should not be confused. The figures do not directly measure employees’ competency either.
The World Economic Forum (2025) includes empathy and active listening, and service orientation and customer service, among the ten most important current core skills. The report also describes the increased relevance of service orientation compared with 2023 and differences by sector and development. This supports the topic’s relevance today without implying that customer focus must grow equally strongly in every role.
In its current service publication, Salesforce states that AI resolved 30% of service cases in 2025 and that 50% is expected for 2027 (Salesforce, 2026). This is research information reported by the provider and a forecast. It is not a general measure of service quality. For organisations, what matters most is how automation changes task allocation, handovers and human judgement.
When standard questions are handled digitally, employees may encounter complex exceptions and emotionally charged questions more often. This is a possible change in job content rather than an automatic consequence for every organisation. The practical task is to investigate which questions remain, which skills and authority they require and how the transition between digital and human service is organised.
An emphasis on speed can also put customer focus under pressure. Employees sometimes receive shorter handling times while questions become more complex. AI can provide information and suggestions, but it does not automatically take responsibility for an appropriate response. Customer focus then also requires careful checking, discussing expectations and recognising when a situation needs human judgement.
Why self-insight makes the difference
Self-insight helps examine which behaviour comes naturally and where deliberate attention is needed. One professional makes contact easily; another investigates thoroughly or organises reliable follow-up. Each emphasis can add value. The question is whether people can also adapt when the situation requires something different.
Development therefore starts with an actual customer case. What did the customer ask? What interest lay behind the question? Which response did the employee choose? What did the customer notice? Which possibilities or limitations affected what followed? Reflection is then connected to behaviour and consequences rather than a general judgement about being customer focused.
An example: what Petra’s profile reveals
Petra’s customer focus
Operational 17% | Tactical 100% | Strategic 25%.
Petra’s profile reveals a clear emphasis: her customer focus is mainly expressed through contributing ideas, advising and coordinating. She wants to understand what is happening and find a substantively sound solution. Direct contact and structural service improvement require more deliberate attention. Connections with her other qualities clarify how this distribution can play out in practice.
Where her tactical strength comes from
The case shows how Petra uses her analytical ability. She gathers information, investigates the cause and tries to understand the question behind the complaint. Her organisational awareness then helps connect the customer’s interest to what is possible internally. Which department needs to be involved? What can be promised? And which solution is genuinely achievable?
Results orientation adds to this. Petra wants the problem solved so the customer can move forward. Analysis brings understanding, organisational awareness brings coordination and results orientation brings progress. Together, these competencies give substance to her tactical customer focus. This combination can be particularly valuable for complex customer questions.
The Thinker learning style fits how Petra approaches this situation: first understanding, connecting information and weighing possibilities. The Individualist emphasis described in her profile also offers a way to discuss her attention to the personal meaning of a customer question. The Achiever emphasis directs attention to her need to reach a concrete result. Together, these profile elements help identify what Petra values and how she uses her qualities.
Why the customer may still miss her commitment
The operational score of 17% reveals an important development point. In the first conversation, Petra mainly attends to the substance. She asks further questions and is already thinking about repair. At that moment, the customer is still focused on the consequences: another delay, a schedule that no longer works and uncertainty about what happens now.
The connection with listening, empathy and communication skills becomes important here. Petra may understand the need substantively yet show too little that she has heard the customer’s frustration. Her commitment then remains partly in her head, while the customer needs an audible, recognisable response.
The insight that brings clarity
Petra is already working to help the customer while he is still waiting to feel that she understands him. Her development point lies in making the attention she already gives to the substance of the question visible.
This requires a small change in sequence. First, Petra acknowledges what the situation means for the customer. Then she checks whether she has understood the need correctly. Next, she applies her analysis and advice. For example: “You adjusted your schedule around this, and now it has happened again. I understand that you want to know where you stand. I’ll investigate what we can put right and agree with you when you’ll have clarity.” Her care and problem solving ability then also become tangible in the interaction.
From a good solution to better service
The strategic score of 25% reveals a second development direction. In this case, Petra concentrates on solving the immediate question. Her results orientation helps. The next step is also to examine what the organisation can learn from this customer question once the solution is in place.
She can use her analytical ability again for this, now to recognise patterns across several customer questions. Initiative helps put a recurring problem on the agenda. Collaboration and communication skills help involve colleagues in an improvement. Her organisational awareness clarifies who can realise the change and which agreements are needed.
A suitable exercise is to answer three questions after resolving a complaint: what did this customer need, where did the problem arise and what can we adjust so other customers encounter it less often? Petra then chooses one improvement and discusses it with the colleagues involved. Her ability to solve an individual question acquires meaning for service as a whole.
What the connections in the profile reveal
For Petra, development lies in two focused steps: making her understanding visible earlier in contact and connecting her solutions more often to structural improvement. Her analytical and tactical strength provides the starting point.
A general statement such as “Petra needs to become more customer focused” would miss both her strength and her development question. Combining competencies, learning style and personality emphases shows much more precisely where she adds value, where friction can arise and which behaviour helps her progress. Self-insight becomes practical: Petra understands her own response, recognises what the customer needs and knows what she can do differently next time.
What this means for organisations
For recruitment, customer focus starts with role analysis. Determine the central customers and questions, the decision making latitude available and the level of behaviour required. Use comparable cases and ask about judgement, follow-up and collaboration. Calm, analytical behaviour and setting boundaries then receive a fair place alongside visible social ease.
For HR, development requires a combination of practice and work design. Training can help with listening, advising or handling tension. It does not resolve missing authority, unclear responsibility or a structurally unachievable service promise. Investigate which conditions support the desired behaviour and which competencies people need to use it.
For team managers, an important task is making dilemmas discussable. When does the customer need a tailored approach? When does a boundary apply? Who decides and who remains responsible for updates? Team learning becomes concrete by discussing cases and improving one working agreement. Psychological safety needs to go together with clear standards for quality and responsibility.
For executives, customer focus concerns coherence. Do positioning, processes, capacity and rewards fit the service being promised? Which customer information reaches decision makers? Are less visible customers’ needs included too? Strategic customer focus gains meaning when these questions affect choices and resources.
Employee protection belongs here too. Clarify how aggression and mistreatment are bounded, where support is available and when a conversation is taken over or ended. Wu and colleagues’ meta-analysis underlines why this matters for wellbeing and work attitudes. Asking employees to be customer focused also means organising conditions in which they can continue to act professionally.
How Voice Your Future makes customer focus visible
Voice Your Future approaches customer focus within a broader competency profile, paying separate attention to operational, tactical and strategic behaviour. This enables discussion of different emphases rather than using one general label. A score acquires meaning when connected to role, context and concrete examples.
Connections with other competencies deepen the conversation. Listening and empathy help explore how needs are understood. Organisational awareness and integrity direct attention to judgement and boundaries. Initiative, results orientation and quality orientation help discuss next steps and delivery. Collaboration and networking can reveal how customer information and relationships are maintained.
Learning style and personality patterns offer additional questions about preferences and development tensions. They do not explain or predict the behaviour. The connections between competencies are widely recognisable, while the specific combination and appropriate development direction vary by person.
The score is a starting point for conversation
Where does someone already understand the need well? Where does commitment become visible? Where does coordination or follow-up stall? Which aspects of the context help or hinder? And what concrete behaviour could be the next step?
A profile thus becomes useful for self-insight, coaching and development. The conversation needs to remain open to information contradicting an initial interpretation. A profile gains value when tested against practice and when it leads to appropriate exercises and support.
The essence of customer focus
Customer focus is the ability to understand the questions, wishes, needs and interests of internal and external customers and act professionally. Operationally, it creates reliable contact. Tactically, needs are translated into appropriate solutions. Strategically, people learn from customer information and strengthen relationships, service and others’ capacity to work with a customer focus.
A strong customer focused approach does three things at once: it takes others seriously, protects what is responsible and achievable, and ensures reliable follow-up. Without understanding, a solution may miss its purpose. Without boundaries, commitment may become unsustainable. Without follow-up, good intentions lose their meaning.
The essence is connecting attention with responsibility. Customers need to notice that their question has been understood and that action fits it. Employees need the latitude and support to make this happen. Customer focus can then contribute to trust, better service and work that remains meaningful for people.
References
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