How to get Your Customers to Create Your Products
How does Starbucks come up with their ideas? Answer: YOU
Guess what? Your customers want to talk to you. I know it is hard to believe, but they do. Some customers actually want to feel as though they are part of your company’s decision making process.
Lead users are the first people to adopt a product, adjust it to meet their needs, and voice their opinions of it. They are opinion leaders and they have followers. Lead users have a large area of influence. Essentially, they are a center of influence for your product and are using the product long before it is mainstream. These are the people encouraging (or discouraging) others to use your products; they are online with blogs, tweeting on Twitter, and posting on social media sites in order to influence the public.
Companies like Starbucks and Dell are leaders in harnessing the power of their customers’ innovations. These companies realize that not only is social media useful in responding quickly to complaints and customer service issues, but also a way to drive product innovation from the users of their products. Each company created pages on their websites (My Starbucks Idea and Dell’s IdeaStorm) that allow customers to post ideas for changes to current products and ideas for future product development. Customers and employees rate the ideas on their website. The ratings are public and some of these ideas, based on their rating, are implemented. These companies understand the power of lead user innovation.
What do you think?
What other companies have you seen do this? Do you think it is beneficial or just a fad? What sort of technology can you use to monitor the public’s perception of your product, brand, and company?
Related articles
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- Infegy Named ‘Innovative Business Analytics Company to Watch’ by Leading Analyst Firm (prweb.com)
- Book Review: The Digital Innovation Playbook: Creating a Transformative Customer Experience by Nicholas J. Webb (blogcritics.org)
This type of user generated R&D is very big in the video game industry as well. Those online forums are buzzing with ideas for the next installment or even for patches to the existing game. The companies rely heavily on user info to identify bugs or glitches in their software so they can update it as soon as possible. These forums are constantly monitored and most ideas are taken seriously. There is one downside and that can be the immature users that pop up and “blast” a company or just plain old cause trouble. Of course with control over the forum they can be dealt with rather quickly so the damage is usually minimal. I think it’s a great idea and can be used in a lot of business models if monitored and utilized correctly. If nothing ever gets implemented from client feed back though, it’s completely pointless and will most likely be detrimental to the business.
Great point and information. What are some methods that the video game industry monitors their forums to keep detractors in line and lead users “developing”?