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How To Show Your Customers You Care.

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In every sector of society, that fact remains that people all want to be heard and consumers are included in the list. The volume of letters sent to newspapers has doubled in less than a decade. However, newspapers are still publishing the same number of letters, which means more than a dozen opinions are still not heard. In this case, many readers are going online to find out what others are saying and to get hundreds of ideas exchanged in the global community. The House and Senate are no exception with this increasing surge of online public opinion. In fact, the volume of e-mail they receive increases by 50% yearly that each congressperson is getting more than a hundred e-mails daily. Again, the demand to be heard is all too obvious and considerably escalating.

Innovations Using Consumer Views

In the marketing world, a new wave is now dominating the realm of product development. Innovating a product or service based on consumer views and opinions has been a remarkable idea that companies are now taking on this current development. Three books have been written about this new trend. Eric von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation describes how the role of “lead users” can make an impact in the development of new products or services. Another book called Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company’s Future by Patricia Seybold presents several ways to capitalize on “customer innovation” by making use of private communities, customer ratings and reviews. Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, the authors of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, also described how companies can adopt the way Wikipedia was able to tap the global community to create new innovations.

Overall, these books are great and can provide you corporate ideas and visions on how to utilize consumer innovation. But you also need to bear in mind that collaboration with consumers and the process of really bringing them into the development and innovation process will, in many ways, be challenging. Over the years, your company may have been used to traditional marketing and product development programs. Perhaps your company currently has people in charge of product development, employees doing market research, people whose job is concentrated on services and internal processes and channel experts that help you open new distribution channels. But with all these work, the reality is, consumers are continually finding ways to get your company’s attention and tell you what you really need to know. Day in and day out, they are making comments and reviews about your product in forums, rating sites, blogs and videos. In more ways than one, they are now part of your company’s innovation process.

Embracing Consumers in Social Media

Once you’ve taken the step of identifying your Social Media objectives, then your company has opened that communication channel with your customers. Predictably, your relationship with your customers will start to develop as you receive insights from them. And this will eventually lead them deeper and more involved in your company. Embracing Social Media means making your customers an important part of product innovation. Developing products that your customers want does not only help your company create better products and processes but also allows you to innovate faster.

There are two reasons why embracing social media tools to reach consumers can make your company move quickly. The first reason is customers would easily tell you what they want. It wouldn’t take them long to voice out what they like and what improvements they would like to see. Using your product becomes a way for them to interact with your company. They may even have ideas that your company development team may not have even thought of. Companies who have tapped this source of innovation have never ceased to be amazed at how fast ideas can be generated. The other reason why embracing Social Media can allow you to innovate faster is because once they get involved, your company can make continuous improvements or iterations. Once you’ve tapped the customer community, you get quick feedbacks. It is far better than asking questions in surveys; conducting a study and having executives review suggestions because these measures can definitely take much of your company’s time and resources. Embracing consumers through social media tools like social networks, blogs, and user-generated sites can enable your company to do more in a lesser period of time. This new kind of development process would also bring your company to a higher level of product innovation.

Dell’s Initiative on Embracing Consumers

You can compare how two massive companies are handling consumer opinions. Accenture is a company with hundreds of employees. But the problem is if you were a prospect or a dissatisfied customer, you wouldn’t know where to turn to. Even Bill Green, the company’s CEO, doesn’t have his contact information or e-mail on the company website. Consumers are often passed around, not because the company deliberately planned to do so, but because they were use to the thinking that only the visible people in corporations had the ability to know what people want and that people would readily know where to find them. However, Accenture’s CEO is actually missing out on the opportunity to have a dialogue with consumers. Although he may feel that it is much easier to deal with attacks from outside the company by not laying out a means for consumers to contact him, he is actually losing an opportunity to start a conversation with his customers.

On the other hand, Dell, which is another giant company, is very much engaged with its customers. Bob Pearson, Dell’s vice president of corporate group communications says that as a company, they always want to be a relevant part of dialogues with consumers. Dell is one of the few companies that became successful in utilizing social media marketing tools. The company is very much linked with its customers that many corporate decisions are made without first considering customers’ requests and opinions. Pearson also stated that in every meeting, the focus is what the community wants. To them, listening to customers is not another PR method to pay lip service but a way for the company to act on the feedbacks they receive. Pearson also explained that this initiative is very much a part of Dell’s DNA. Over the years, the company has gone a long way from merely listening to feedbacks and responding to criticisms to becoming one of the few companies that seek consumer suggestions, whether it’s about developing new products or implementing company initiatives.

While the company started out with its consumer-centered blog, its social networking platform called IdeaStorm is the program that is actually getting the most percentage of valuable customer insight. IdeaStorm was created similarly to social tagging sites such as Reddit.com or Digg.com and basically functions as a giant online suggestion box. This initiative has really helped the business grow and has made an impact with the direction the company is taking with regards to its new products and services. Pearson reported that they have already made several changes within the company a few months after the launching of IdeaStorm. The site became an overwhelming success for Dell that more than a hundred thousand people responded in a span of a few days after the company announced new machines were running the Linux operating system. Dell has progressed from ignoring individuals to embracing consumers through social media tools.

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