Imagine that you have a company which is characterised by average leadership capability and behaviours; top down directive change; poor communication; an inside-out customer perspective; a focus on lag measures and metrics; an historical and embedded emphasis on processes over people and all operating in the context of an increasingly commoditised and competitive market. If you were faced with the challenge of making this company more "outside-in", i.e. customer and market-oriented, how would you go about it? What are the key issues that will drive change? What would be the likely high level internal strategic issues? And exactly how would you embark on a programme of change?
In this new white paper, we provide answers to these challenging questions. Access your free copy from the OMC Website here. (registration required)
Here is a summary of the Getting Started tips we provide in the paper:
1. Start listening to what customers are saying! Monitor their conversations and respond with candor, integrity and openness to earn their trust.
2. Develop a strong internal case for exploring customer dialogue and learning using new social computing technologies. Switch some expenditure from broadcast advertising and marketing to blogs, RSS and podcasts. Start small yet aim to quickly prove the value of the knowledge gained.
3. Focus less on control and more on collaboration. Understand and promote the benefits of ceding brand control of customer relationships to build better two-way dialogue and conversation.
4. Create a customer community to stimulate collaborative knowledge exchange between customers. Actively participate in the community and be passionate about maintaining high levels of listening and engagement.
5. Train contact centre or staff in other established channels (such as branch) to ask more open-ended questions to gather contextual customer knowledge and uncover latent needs. Review existing call centre scripts and rules for their adaptability and learning potential.
6. Develop and test incentives for staff to systematically exchange customer feedback with appropriate teams or units within the company.
7. Define a new set of customer performance measures. Review existing KPI’s for their ability to promote an outside-in mindset and decision-making. Combine internal efficiency and effectiveness measures with customer-based efficiency and effectiveness measures.
8. Bring expert lead-user customers into the company and ask them about how they perceive, access and value the organisation, its products and services.
9. Design and test incentives to motivate and reward customers to share knowledge.
10. Overcome internal barriers to knowledge sharing by finding new spaces for employees and managers to socialise and exchange ideas.
11. Analyse customer complaints – a source of existing “value failure” and find the root-causes of failure.
12. Hold a customer innovation workshop for managers to connect with emerging market and customer trends and technologies – and the capabilities required to implement them successfully. Use the opportunity to rigorously challenge existing assumptions. (Yes, that is where OMC Group can come in!)
13. Review existing customer segmentation models to identify “fit for purpose”. For example, are needs-based segmentations really providing the insights required to innovate with higher predictability and success?
14. Measure existing levels of customer trust then identify and fix current “trustbusters” in company processes, behaviour and marketing communications.
15. Find new ways to observe customers in their “consumption environment” as they are using your company’s products and services. But again, do so openly and with high integrity.
This paper was written in response to a question posed on our website. We offer to provide bespoke replies, within three working days, to any question related to customer innovation. Questions must be posed by executives from commercial or public sector organisations and they must relate to customer innovation issues or opportunities that are genuine to their organisation. We reserve the right to not reply (although that is rarely the case).
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