Community Driven Innovation, use the customer

Het is weer tijd voor een gastpost en deze keer is die van Jessica Groeneweg en Inge Mur. Alleen in het Engels maar daarom zeker niet minder interessant!

Recently we read a post on Fackeldeyfinds where they clarify why corporate websites are not effective anymore. An important reason is that these sites to often give a slick view of the company. Customers can not share or find opinions and experiences about the products that are sold. Therefore these sites do not reflect the opinion of the customers.

This corresponds to the amount of posts on different blogs concerning the companies that do pretend to listen to their customers but are in reality not doing so. Stories on www.marketingfacts.com do emphasize the fact that companies still think and react from their own needs instead of using the needs of the customer.

However, there are examples of companies which effectively undertake first steps to let the consumer decide what there is to find on there website. We are not talking about an interactive website, where consumers can leave their opinions, but a website that is developed out of the needs of the consumer. T-Mobile is such a company that last year turned the envelope of a marketing driven to a consumer driven website, www.t-mobile.nl.

But there is more to do than taking a first step to a consumer driven website. Customers are more and more participating at discussion platforms and communities where they can share their experiences and opinions about products and services. For information about possible products, customers can find ratings and experiences among the internet to decide whether or not to buy a product or service. NRC writes that very little companies react and participate in these discussions.

Starting a community seems to be the right thing to do. Some companies have communities for their customers installed at their website. For instance, ABN AMRO launched a 2.0 site but the actions and reactions that are expected on such a site are poor. UPC has another strategy. They have been reacting at discussions that started on other sites. This is a more effective way, but they still miss out on some important discussions.

Community driven innovation is using the fact that customers rather discuss products and rate them with each other than with the company. By facilitating and actively participating in this discussions and inputs companies can get actually develop new ideas and product innovations. The most important for CDI is that the participation of these customers is taken very seriously and that they actually see the results of their input. It looks like community driven innovation can provide companies a better understanding of the consumer and therefore help to get a better position in this consumer driven world. At least Dell defines a few lessons to be learned in a presentation about CDI. These do correspond to the fact companies have to be actively involved. There lessons are:

- don’t underestimate participation or volume
- topdown leadership push drives business engagement
- accessibility; intergrate with communications strategies and tools
- active moderation; they want to hear from you
- subject matter experts need to participate in the conversations
- an idea management process aids quick action and response
- allow for humer and chatting
- censor with care and candor
- know your audience
- specifically for employees sites – HR is a key Stakeholder

The complete presentation can be downloaded here. This also gives a overview of Dell interpretation of CDI.