• How-to

Gone are the days when companies would package certain sets of features into products and offer them to the customer. In today’s Web 2.0 world, when the customer’s engagement with products, services and brands is facilitated through multiple touchpoints and interactive platforms, companies can no longer stay within and ignore the customer. As a startup, you should inculcate this culture early on into your company.

Understand what customers are trying to do
Every customer uses your product or service with a specific target of achieving a certain desirable outcome or getting a certain job done. For example, assume you are a recruitment startup. A customer looking for a middle-level manager approaches you. Through the new middle-level manager, the company may want to permeate a certain culture to its junior-level staff. There may be productivity targets involved. If you don’t understand the customer’s domain or  requirements from your startup,  you will never become a true facilitator in the jobs-to-be-done process.

Identify the right customers
There will always be a certain set of proactive, knowledgeable customers whom you can involve from early design to delivery stages of the product/service lifecycle. If you are a software company (open source) or have an online model like Wikipedia, all your users are partners in the value creation chain.

Offer opportunities and resources
Social media platforms and collaborative technologies could come in handy here. For example, Nike lets users get on to its portal and design their own sneakers.

Build efficient interfaces
Here we are referring to both your digital and physical interfaces, including your customer-facing staff. If you are engaging your customer through the digital medium, your online platform should be welcoming, highly interactive and a place where the customer can express his needs or requirements.

Fedex lets its corporate customers change the transit time and direction of packages in real time through its online interface. The customer is directly creating value while getting his job done. In the real world, the most important link in the value delivery chain is your customer-facing staff. They know best what the customer wants.

Remember: ‘Customer is king’
What creates value and what doesn’t? Let the customer decide this. Till now, all refrigerator companies deigned the freezer on top and the fresh food section at the bottom. LG is now offering bottom freezer refrigerators for customer convenience in accessing the fresh food section at eye level. A simple insight could sometimes be a game changer. Throw open your doors to customer-driven value creation.

©Entrepreneur November 2010

Tags:
How-to, value creation