PEAK by Chip Conley

Author:Chip Conley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119434924
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2017-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Peak Prescriptions

Will it be tech or touch that builds your expertise of understanding your customers' desires? If you're a leader in your industry, it will probably be a combination of the two.

Engage intimately with your customers so you can truly understand their desires. Nearly 80 percent of companies say they are moving to customized value-added solutions as opposed to selling just standard products or services to their customers. General Electric's CEO Jeff Immelt has instigated dreaming sessions with key customers to understand just what they're looking for from his products as well as to understand where their needs may be in the future. Meg Whitman, former CEO at eBay and now CEO at Hewlett-Packard, instituted a bi-monthly voice of the customer program in which 12 to 18 customers are flown to eBay's headquarters for a full day of discussions and brainstorming. I know lots of senior executives who spend a few hours each year on the front lines listening to their customers. What are you doing to institutionalize a conversation starter with your customers? Think of this as a marketing investment for your existing customers—as opposed to a marketing cost for new customers—that has an enormous return on investment. You can't rely exclusively on customer satisfaction surveys to understand your customers' specific desires. There's a distinct correlation between profitability and a company's ability to create customized solutions for its core customers. Ask yourself, “How many of our top 10 customers have been the beneficiary of a customized solution from our company?” If you don't create that solution, someone else will.

Use technology to test your concept with your customers even before you launch it. Before the first guest had the opportunity to stay in Starwood's new “aloft” brand, a couple hundred thousand potential guests got to experience a cyber-conceptual version of this hip, mid-price offering on the site Second Life (www.secondlife.com). Second Life is a virtual world where community inhabitants or avatars (computerized representations of the web users themselves) roam around virtual locales, meeting other avatars, and basically explore a three-dimensional game of life. Starwood joins an elite cast of companies who've established a presence on Linden Lab's Second Life website. Starwood gets the benefit of tapping into these avatars' desires and receiving a wealth of feedback on everything from the hotel restaurant concept to how the bathroom should be laid out. Starwood has even been able to track which lobby magazines are most popular. It's also given Starwood the ability to create buzz about its product even before the first aloft opens. The company created a launch concert with singer-songwriter Ben Folds that was standing-room only in a virtual kind of way. Virtual worlds like Second Life give companies the ability to create a participative relationship with prospective customers so that these customers' desires are understood even before a product is launched.

Consider how you can build a learning relationship with your customers. Depending on your business, you could take the Amazon or Netflix mass customization approach by using technology to support deeper knowledge of your customers.

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