Happy customers come from smart innovation.
The entire reason any business innovates is to do more for their customers and to do it better than their competitors. But especially in a process that is often internal and driven by internal decisions, that can be tough to keep in focus. So how, when working on your innovation strategy, do you keep the customer front and center?
What Do Customers Ask For?
A good starting place is what customers ask you for. Customers are offering you feedback all the time if you know where to look. It’s not just in the usual places either, although looking at customer feedback emails, sending out marketing surveys, and other commonplace tools can certainly help. They’re offering you feedback in ways you might not fully realize at first.
For example, if you speak to your sales team, they can probably tell you that they get a call, at least a few times a month, from somebody looking for a product or service that does something yours doesn’t, or that it can do, but it isn’t really designed for, or at least is a use you haven’t considered. You might notice, for example, that nail polish companies are increasingly marketing clean polish less as a personal item and more as an easy to use all-purpose sealant.
So, look closely at the questions you get, and start there with your innovations. Unexpected markets can be powerful ones.
What Do They Use?
Another question is to look at what customers do buy and why they buy it. Baking soda is a great example; it’s more popular, at this point, as an all-purpose cleaning supply and household cleanser than it is for baking! Notice that Arm & Hammer isn’t exactly talking up recipes in their marketing campaigns. You can still use baking soda to bake, but the vast majority of baking soda sold goes into cleaning solutions, to scrub surfaces, and to suck stinky odors out of refrigerators.
Often, uses of what you sell tell you much more about your customers than the customers themselves. As you innovate, consider how customers engage with your products and how you can encourage that engagement. Can you make your product simpler to use? Can you make it more powerful? Is there a demand for industrial strength or a softer formulation?
What do you hear from customers?
What Do They Need In The Future?
We, as a species, love talking about the future, and what people foresee in their industry in the next decade can offer hints as to what they want for the next quarter. After all, part of innovation is delivering the future of your industry, even if it’s just a small step towards that. So what future do your customers want? What are they predicting? And can you give it to them?
Who Does This Serve?
Finally, the best way to keep the customer front and center is to constantly ask your team “Who does this serve?” Some forms of innovation can be handy without the customer ever seeing them: Snappier supply chains, better and cheaper materials, tighter construction. But always ask what the customer will see. If it’s the same product, just cheaper or with a slightly different color and texture, is that enough?
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