Don’t forget: the customer comes first
And your product will have to be multifunctional to make the grade
CUSTOMER centricity continues to be a buzz phrase in organisations, with companies beefing up their customer-entricity departments to cater for the increasingly complex customer. As an expert on the topic, I am seeing an increasing demand for talks and workshops on this.
Over the years, established organisations experience very little change, while their disruptive competitors continue to gain market share. This is typically due to the mistakes the older organisations make in how they think about being customer centric.
They make the error of ring-fencing their customercentricity programme to be solely a marketing stunt, revived annually — perhaps even hiring a dedicated customer-centricity officer — and then calling it a day.
The problem with this narrowminded approach is that prioritising customers is not a marketing initiative; it is something that requires a complete overhaul of how the organisation is designed.
Companies can no longer put a product out in the market in the hope that the customer will accept it, without concerning themselves with whether the product is addressing the customer’s needs. The customer’s perspectives and insights need to be in the room when crucial decisions are being made in the organisation.
It all begins and ends with the customer. This ability to be constantly aware of customer needs is why disruptive organisations continue to dominate the market, while the old incumbents lose ground. There is a reason why industry disruptors continue to gain traction, despite the fact that there is hardly any secret in how they design their products.
Good examples of global disruptors that continue to gain traction are Airbnb in the hotel industry, Uber in the transport industry and Facebook in the advertising industry.
These companies succeed by doing nothing but giving the customer the kind of solution that meets the many needs they are trying to fulfil when they buy the product. This kind of thinking is referred to as the “jobs to be done” philosophy — where a business looks at the jobs that the customer is trying to do, and then designs the kind of product that can meet those needs.
The job being fulfilled goes beyond the primary reason that the customer is buying the product. There are other jobs that the customer wants to get done with the same product. Which is why smartphones have gained so much traction: they are multifunctional devices in one product.
The “jobs to be done” philosophy — pioneered by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, an expert on disruptive innovations — also asserts that customers purchase the product not just for the multifunctional needs that it addresses, but also the emotional needs that it meets. This is another element that nondisruptive organisations overlook in their designs.
Look at what Apple has been able to do with technology. It continues to pioneer new products that do a multitude of the jobs that the customer is trying to complete. Every time there is a new Apple innovation on the market, I am among those sceptical about the product’s relevance to my needs. When I eventually give in and buy the product, I am amazed that I was ever able to survive without it.
There is no magic in Apple’s processes — it just gives its customers what they want.
The reason why many organisations do not innovate their products quickly enough to retain and gain market share is that they struggle to redesign their businesses in such a way that enables them to be agile in addressing customer needs.
Change is hard. It is difficult to introduce the innovative thinking and design approaches that are required once you bring the customer into the room. But if you think about the fact that every cent of revenue the business receives comes from the customer, the need to understand customers better becomes a no-brainer.
If you are still in doubt about the merits of innovation centred on what customers want, take a look at Nokia.
It used to be the world’s biggest seller of cellphones. Even though many years have passed and most cellphone companies now understand that the mobile device is needed for more than just making phone calls, Nokia remains bogged down in memories of its golden age.
The company demonstrated this when it announced the return of the Nokia 3310 model at Mobile World Congress held in Spain this week — with most of its features remaining consistent with the original model from 17 years ago. Instead of moving with the times, Nokia is confident that it can revive the market for this product.
For Nokia, and any other organisation that operates in an outdated manner, the market will deliver a rude wake-up call.