Guest Blog: When You Learn to Trust Your Customers, Wonderful Things Can Happen
This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my colleague Adele Halsall talks about the debate over listening to and implementing the customer opinion. She gives some great examples of companies who are doing it right. – Shep Hyken
As customers, we rarely get to witness a large or global company involving consumers in the production process. And yet we’re always hugely impressed by the ones that do.
In a world where the customer has increasing influence and a stronger voice in businesses’ output, it makes sense to involve customers more not just at the feedback stages but during the production process too.
However, few companies are brave enough to carry it out.
Customer Trust in Action
Let’s start by looking at one of the most recognised brands in the world today, known precisely for its involvement with customers: LEGO.
LEGO initially made its name as the creator of the classic, brick-shaped plastic that allowed kids to build endless creations, occupying their imagination for hours on end. However, the company began to lose touch with customers in the early 2000s, resulting in a mournful slide in sales and a drop in customer faith.
Enter LEGO’s grand plan –a public competition to see just what consumers wanted from their brand. The result showed that customers wanted the simple, classic LEGO back; the same one they’d fallen in love with all those years ago. LEGO set about refocusing the design process to give them just this.
Before long, LEGO was producing products that children wanted to play with again. It also resumed its traditional habit of paying attention to trends in popular franchises, buying the franchise rights and recreating it in the form of LEGO (Batman and Transformers, anyone?).
Earlier in 2014, LEGO launched a marketing campaign that gave its UK fans the opportunity to submit their ideas for new LEGO products. Named ‘LEGO Ideas’, the platform is a clear-cut example of a company giving its customers an active voice; not being afraid to let go of a little control, and welcoming risks to get closer to its fans.
Another company that places tremendous trust in its customers’ ability to know best is Amazon, albeit in a different way. Amazon doesn’t wait around for its customers to say what they want, but rather anticipates their desires in advance by paying attention to their shopping activity. It is this shrewd and attentive observation over the years that has led to the seller’s innovative services such as one-click ordering; same-day delivery and ‘recommended items’.
According to its CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon is not competitor-obsessed but “customer-obsessed” instead. In an interview for Forbes, the tactful leader explained, “We don’t focus on what’s going to be good for the next quarter; we focus on what’s going to be good for customers.”
Indeed, the Kindle tablet was just one example of this, defined primarily by customer desires rather than by budget or engineering preferences. When asked how much he was willing to spend on the product, Bezos’ answer was, “How much do we have?”
But perhaps more important is the fact that Amazon is a highly data-driven company. The seller is able to use the data generated by customer shopping habits to determine how their experience can be made even better. This helps to address the ‘unspoken needs’ of customers that they may not even know they had, and the hard data makes it easier to turn these insights into solid actions.
The Customer: Another Member of Your Team
All types of businesses would do well to remember that the customer is quite literally another member of their team. It’s amazing how many brands claim to ‘put the customer first’; yet so few of them put this mantra into concrete and measurable action.
Jeff Bezos has been known to implement the ‘empty chair’ technique, whereby an empty chair is placed in every business meeting to remind team members of his/her presence. It’s surprising how easily companies can forget about the customer – the one that pays everyone’s wages – when making those important production decisions.
How and When to Implement Customer Opinion
Steve Jobs’ famous quote about the uselessness of the customer’s opinion has gone down in business history as one of the most controversial; however it does bear some relevance.
In Jobs’ view, seeking customer ideas on building a new product is pointless as “a lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them”.
Indeed, many companies are deterred from putting such a crucial element of control in their customers’ hands because:
Their ideas could be costly to implement
Customers’ ideas could fall out of favour shortly after production, leading to a fall in sales
Their demands may not fit in with a brand’s existing business strategy
The boundaries imposed by demand can limit creativity
Catering to customer trends can hinder a company’s ability to innovate.
Many experts debate whether customer opinion has any value at all when it comes to innovating new products. But whether or not a brand changes its production process as a result is not entirely the point.
Instead, seeking customers’ ideas and responding to behavioural preferences creates a positive bond that is difficult to replicate. By simply being invited to give their input, customers will feel that a brand really cares about what they think and is willing to take their ideas on board. This alone is enough to strengthen the customer relationship.
In the case of LEGO, customers have been able to share their ideas via a controlled platform that has become an opportunity for social engagement in itself. Besides browsing pending projects, people can vote for the ones they’d like to see happen and share their comments.
Amazon, on the other hand, is data-driven. It looks at the behaviour of its customers to conclude their preferences, and uses this evidence as reason to take a leap of faith when introducing new practices.
And the outcome?
It would be hard to argue that either Amazon or LEGO are lacking in positive customer relationships, built on faith and a strong trust that they will deliver what their customers expect them to do. And it’s all because they deigned to trust their customers first.
It can be scary to find a balance between innovation and delivering what your customers expect. But let it be said that when you learn to trust your customers, wonderful things can happen.
Adele Halsall is a writer and researcher for Customer Service Guru. She is passionate about retail and consumer trends, and how this is shaped and governed by advertising and social marketing. She is particularly experienced in marketing and customer engagement, and enjoys contributing to ongoing debates related to best business practices, start-up culture, and the culture of customer relations. Email her at adele@customerserviceguru.co.uk or @gurucustomers
For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com
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