Welcome the customer onto the product journey

The world is becoming smaller by the minute. As a lecturer I sometimes talk about the world as an example of a huge system thoroughly interconnected by invisible arcs linking every physical object in existence. A bit over-dramatic but you get the picture. Fueled by the Internet and social media, reality nowadays is a lot closer to my depiction that you actually think. As individuals, our personal and professional world has expanded. Our links and relationships with friends and family on the other side of the world have become stronger. Information and news reach us quicker and in turn we are quicker to reply and react.

The same is true for organisations and products. Think about it, thanks to the internet now we can reach more potential customers and suppliers than ever before. Our products can reach them quicker than ever before thanks to the likes of Amazon Prime or the new products available from DHL or even the national post service.

However, there is a downside to all these wonderful relationships and newly found customers. The point I made about being able to sell your products easier and quicker works both in your favour and against you. Competitors that in the past wouldn’t have come near your customer pool, are now taking those customers away. Think Alibaba.com eroding some of the well-established eBay markets.

There is more bad news. It’s not just new competitors your organisation has to worry about. Customers are also becoming more proactive, more vocal and more impatient. They have unlimited access on tap to reviews on your company, customer service and product quality. Furthermore, they have more choice and as a result of this choice their loyalty has become fickle.

In my experience, the answer to the problem of customer loyalty has always been cross-sell. Entangle the customer with so many of our products that leaving us is more of a hassle than it’s worth it. That is true to a certain degree, and if executed properly that strategy delivers not only loyalty but also increased revenues and customer satisfaction. There are other options but the one that from my point of view is the most exciting at the moment is co-creation.

As a concept is relatively simple: ask the customer what they want and involve them in the process of developing it. By doing this, the product becomes an intrinsic part of the customer. How could you ever leave the product that you helped to create? It’s par with abandoning a puppy after Christmas.  

Aric Rindfleisch defined co-creation as:

“Co-creation is the realization that one’s customers can lend value beyond the traditional means of simply choosing and using your product and/or service.”

This realisation translates into business changes that enable the participation of customers in the development of new products and services. I would go one step further and suggest that the co-creation process should not only involve customers but internal stakeholders too. In that way we can deliver customer propositions that are closer to the real needs of the customer while at the same time we can enhance the new product development (NPD) process supporting these propositions.