making people's lives better

FC has an article about Progressive Insurance; their feed had a quote that caught my eye:

"If you want to improve something, start measuring it"

Because I work on figuring out how to measure and improve large distributed systems. But the line that I really like from the article is

"We're not in the business of auto insurance. We're in the business of reducing the human trauma and economic costs of automobile accidents -- in effective and profitable ways."

They're not selling just another product or service; they're selling a way to make people's lives better. And they're thinking about their business that way. Customer focus doesn't just mean making your product easier to use. It means thinking about how your product makes your customer's lives better. I think that's the only reason they were able to think of the kinds of changes described in the article.
Creating Passionate Users is a great place to read more about this.