Customer empowerment key trend according to CEO’s

For today's world, CEO have a clear view on the rapid changes but what about five years from now? A survey of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) with CEO's and technology experts gave us some uprising insights in the vision of CEO's. Although surprising???!!

technology advances will continue to have a heavy impact on how companies operate, to judge by the views of executives surveyed for this study. Among numerous factors including concerns of macroeconomic uncertainty, looming talent shortages and expected changes in market demand, it is technology innovation that corporate leaders expect to have the heaviest influence on their business in 2013

When we are fair and look at the outcomes of the survey then they are not mind bending! The main surprising effect is the way CEO's thing about the future and the chances they see and the opposite effect most their employees show...that is fear for the rise of the consumer. And not only fear but also more shocking: the employees of the CEO do not know what to do! The rise of technology will mainly impact the way customers interact with their organization.

Risks are nonetheless inherent for firms in this development, ranging from the failure to embrace customer involvement sufficiently to the yielding of too much power to customer groups

Let's have a look at the main outcomes of the great survey from EIU.

Customer empowerment will mainly improve innovation within organizations
Innovation is still done within the corporate walls of organizations. According to the CEO this will and must change rapidly.

In 2013 customers will represent by far the leading source of new product and service ideas, according to survey respondents. This will help make a reality of "prosuming", a concept in which the line between consumer and producer becomes blurred and customers contribute value for free

On-line communities will proliferate
Communities will become the main base for innovative ideas but also for customer service and support!

Web-based customer communities will play a much greater role than today in gathering—from customers and others—innovative ideas for products and services, and also to assist in providing product support.

Ensuring trust and security—of communities and networks—will remain paramount

Policing on-line communities to prevent misuse will be key to gaining the trust and co-operation of users

Technology will push the personalization of products and services ahead
More products and services will be able to be personalized by individual consumers.

Fully 70% of surveyed executives expect their main products or services to be fully or mostly customisable in five years

Customer interaction will mainly take place via mobile devices
Mobile communication is hot and will become even hotter in the near future. CEO even believe that in 2013 the main contact between their organization and their customers is through mobile devices.

Mobile devices are unlikely to be the primary channel of customer-supplier communication in 2013, but companies will need to be able to interact with customers much more widely over mobile channels, and using more advanced applications, such as video

Looking at these key findings I can only think about one thing:

To survive in the world CEO's predict their organizations must change dramatically and fast!

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)
Download survey: The digital company 2013