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.

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.

Amazon – World’s Most Customer Centric Company

Want to know why the Kindle is more differentiated?

What does Jeff Bezos think about his competition?

What does the “world’s most customer centric company” mean to Amazon?

Do you think Walmart has a chance against Amazon?

Watch Jeff Bezos discuss all the above & more with Charlie Rose in this interview.

Volvo’s Quest For Customer Centricity

Here is an interview of Volvo’s Stuart Lennie where he shares some of the thought processes behind Volvo’s quest to become customer centric.

Customer Centricity: It's Not Easy, But Worth It

In this interview with Stuart Lennie, President, Volvo IT, North America and VP, Volvo's Global Sales to Order Solutions Unit, we get the opportunity to learn from another company that is not just talking about the customer, but actually implementing the significant strategic shifts required to become customer centric. Volvo has developed a vision, a strategy and a methodology to keep existing customers by understanding what is important to them.

Amazon & Zappos on the same tree!

Jeff Bezos mentions in his video that he "gets all weak kneed" with customer obsessed company. Well, I am a sucker too for businesses & business cultures that make customer the focus of their existence. And its great to hear that two of these exemplary companies - Amazon & Zappos - are coming together (link to the news).

In announcing the coming together of these brands, Bezos mentions a short but complete list of his business principles.

• Obsess Over Customers
• Invent
• Think Long Term
  Its always Day 1!

Tony Hsieh (CEO - Zappos.com)takes a typical Zappos fun way to announce the news to Zappos employees.

"Zappos' customer service obsession reinforces Amazon’s mission to be the earth's most customer-centric company."

Update: Check out the sequence of Tony's tweets leading up to the announcement of the acquisition. Interesting.

• Big day! Email I just sent to Zappos employees today about the Amazon acquisition - http://blogs.zappos.com/ceoletter 1:32 PM Jul 22nd from web
• "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." -JFK 7:02 AM Jul 22nd from web
• "Some see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not." -George Bernard Shaw 6:08 PM Jul 21st from web

Tony Hseih on Zappos Culture

From ITConversations :

Tony Hsieh

Download Audio File [link]

In this presentation at the Web 2.0 Conference, Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh talks about his first business selling pizza in college, starting Link Exchange after college, and how he eventually ended up leading Zappos as the CEO.  Tony discusses how his experience at Link Exchange influenced him to focus on corporate culture as a top priority, and why he thinks culture is so important to a company’s future growth and success.

Tony talks about the internal vision of Zappos not just to be an Internet footware merchant, but to be a brand that is known for an excellent customer experience.  He goes on to list a number of specific techniques that the company uses to enhance customer service, and explains why he thinks that the telephone is still one of the best branding devices available.

How do you define culture?  Tony talks about some of the core values of Zappos, and why it’s important to have values that aren’t just a plaque on a wall.  These values permeate every aspect of the company, and Tony details some of the hiring and training practices that Zappos uses to ensure that every employee fits into the corporate culture.

Custommerce - Customer Centric Initiative in India

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UPDATE (as on 6th Nov 2008)

The folks from custommerce mailed me soon after this blog posting. They have indicated that ways of engaging a wider community for this movement has been discussed in the Kovalam conclave. And they will have some concrete steps soon. 

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custommerce - Strategies for a Customer-Driven Economy

Vision: A customer experience driven globally competitive Indian economy. 

The above mentioned vision statement has prompted me to check on this initiative a couple of times earlier. On trying the join custommerce call for action, a response seem to have emanated from the sales desk of Servion. Though custommerce is termed as a movement, no answers are forthcoming about how I can be a part of the same. 

To be fair, I did receive a notification about their latest conclave in Kovalam. Presentations from the conclave are also available at their site. The presentation Customer Centricity: Challenges in Getting Top Management Buy-in is an interesting topic & on target. 

Still trying to figure how best to contribute to the movement though.

Gandhi on Customers

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Intended for this to be a Oct 2 (Gandhi's birthday) post. Better late than never.

I also know that I have mentioned this before. But then, there are still many who haven't learnt from this.
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A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption to our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider to our business. He is a part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us the opportuity to do so.

- Mahatma Gandhi -

What is a customer centric organization?

A post by a fellow blogger triggered this thought process in me - What is a customer centric organization?

I would believe that the following are some key identifiers of a customer centric organization -

• customer centricity is a strategic imperative rather than a group or department or annual or marketing initiative
• the decision making process in the organization places the impact of the decision on the customer as its focal point
• customer success is a key consideration across the rank & breadth of the organization
• a strong belief that customer success & customer service is what will eventually lead to organizational profits
• customer focus is a key element of the organization's culture
• customer loyalty is constantly & actively sought

Is being customer centric altruistic?

Often qualities of altruism, sacrifice and benevolance are associated with customer centricity. The common perception is that being customer centric is tantamount to accepting a win-loose (the customer centric organization loosing to the customer) strategy. Best left to the realms of business idealism?

Being customer centric means that the supplier organization is sensitized to the world of its customers. What are their business challenges? What does it take to succeed in that world? What is my customer's strategy? What adds value to my customer or their customers? Basically - the abiliy to get into our customers shoes.

Isn't this something we see in a ot of successful people around us.

Creating a buzz - customer centric or gimmick?

Bengaluru (or Bangalore) has witnessed an explosion in property rates over the last few years. The city has been the nerve center of the Indian IT boom. Instances of land rates increasing by 10-15 times in 2-3 years is normal. This growth has created millionaires of people ...none more in numbers than real estate developers.

But as in the rest of the world, real estate developers are most opportunistic too. Never loosing a chance to make more money, they have the dubious distinction of being difficult to handle, not serious about any deadlines & being short sighted.

There are exceptions of course.

One of my friends recently told me about Shriram Properties (a real estate developer) who just returned back 1.5% of the initially charged (collected about 3 years ago) amount for a flat. Reasons quoted - they had overestimated on a few accounts. Obviously this friend of mine was thrilled. Not only that, he was telling me & anybody else who would listen to him that day. And now here I am blogging about it.

Customer centric or marketing gimmick? Either ways, the act has created a lot of good will. Created quite a bit of buzz in the marketplace. And has a lot more prospective buyers than they would've had without this act.

• Explore more & more ways of benefiting your customers. It will pay back.
• Every real estate developer's web site has space dedicated to how customer centric they are. But action speaks louder than words - DO something.
• The more notorious your industry, the better the chances of customer centricity helping you differentiate yourself.

I also found another post on a similar topic - customer centricity amongst US commercial real estate companies: http://cpnmhn.typepad.com/management_matters/2007/12/are-you-custome.html.

Jack Welch on Customer Loyalty

Inspiration for this post -

Customer Loyalty's New Rules - BW Podcast - The Welch Way

Some of Jack Welch's insights from this conversation on the topic -

• Rules of customer loyalty has changed - there is a paradigm shift


• Its moving beyond cost, quality & service (the traditional value engines) - which are nice, but is assumed to be a given now & not sufficient for building loyalty


• Welch suggests - earn loyalty by making yourself indispensible at an intellectual level


• Its all about your customers winning. To earn loyalty, a supplier should think about ways to provide customers a competitive advantage that no one else can


• It requires a different mindset - always thinking about how you can make your customers more competitive in their markets, ways to make them win, etc.


• Its all about getting into an intense partnership with your customers ..if you don't, someone else will.