Category: Quotes

Customers *Must* Be Part of the Co-Creation Process

The Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed 226 executives at global enterprises to find out how smart companies innovate as part of a Oracle sponsored study about cultivating business-led innovation.

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One of the key findings of the study has been that “companies furthest along the innovation path utilize customer data and customer participation in their product and service improvements. Fifty-four percent of respondents in this group actively collect customer feedback and analyze customer data for clues to innovate effectively, but in different ways.”

As Oracle SVP Bob Evans blogs: “Customers *Must* Be Part of the Co-Creation Process. As companies of all sizes and across all industries realize that the co-creation of value and of experiences with customers can be a profound way to boost customer loyalty, they also must recognize that relevant innovation in a customer-free vacuum is impossible. Mid-size and smaller companies ($500 million or less) connect directly with customers in interviews about product design and testing, while companies with revenue above $1 billion or more likely to use social technology and sentiment analysis to uncover customer-focused innovations.”

You can find the details of this study & the report at the Oracle feature page or The Economist Intelligence Unit site.

Who is your customer?

Seth Godin rocks in packing wisdom in nugget sized blog posts. This one on customers stands out.

If you can only build one statue, who is it going to be a statue of?
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/02/who-is-your-customer.html

Suddenlink | Customer Experience Lessons

CableGuy
(Photo courtesy flickr | Dex Encarta)

In his post FastCompany | 7 Timeless Ways To Improve Customer Satisfaction, author Drew Neisser filters out the following success factors for customer (satisfaction or experience – call it what you may) initiatives based on Suddenlink’s success. In a struggling economy & in an industry with a questionable reputation for bad customer experiences, Suddenlink has shown improvements in multiple industry measures – $ terms & otherwise. 

  1. Put someone in charge – having someone responsible for customer interest makes customer initiatives more focused
  2. Measure. Measure. Measure. – rely on multiple measures of how your business has performed in the customer’s perspective
  3. Fix the real issues – measuring is a starting point; addressing issues that are identified as part of the measurement is the REAL deal
  4. Link metrics to evaluation – to make customers a priority, link metrics to performance evaluation & even compensation
  5. Detractors are an opportunity – unhappy customers or detractors should be viewed as an opportunity for positive conversion
  6. Use social media to understand & serve customers (not sell more) – social media is a great listening tool to understand needs & respond to issues
  7. Continuous improvement – customer initiatives should never have an end, they are always work in progress to achieve even better customer outcomes

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Related Posts:
~ Amazon – World’s Most Customer Centric Company
~ Tony Hsieh – Delivering Happiness
~ Volvo’s Quest For Customer Centricity
~ Customer Service Champs 2010