At consulting companies, the customer is the focus. You'll probably develop better business skills, even if you're not directly customer facing, simply because the people around you will be more business saavy. There will be a wider variety of projects to work on allowing you more exposure. Often these is extensive travel to client sites.
There is less in this than you might think, Mark. Have you ever worked for one of the big consultantcies?
I would say the customer focus is missing, possibly because the customer usually doesn't know what they are looking for. So the consultantcy defines it for them. They spend a bunch of money and then seek to convince the customer that what they have produced is what was needed. Even when that is obviously not the case.
This is too general, I know. This refers to the sumo-sized consultantcies. Frequently the smaller firms are better both technically and at delivering customer business needs. I moved from a sumo-size consultantcy to a much smaller outfit recently. The culture is markedly different. Most notably the smaller outfit succeeds by delivering successful systems rather than creating immortal (long term) projects which go on for years and years.
Big consultancies are a great place to pick up lousy habits. I haven't worked at a product company, but it's hard to imagine that most of them are worse. For one thing you are responsible for delivering something sometime, and your customers cannot be entirely blinded by bullshit. So I suspect you must do decent work.