How Do You Engage With Customers To Innovate?

According to different sources on the subject of best practices, “successful customer engagement consists of sending the right messages, to the right people, at the right time and place, to help them get to a desired outcome”.

To that end, companies use a variety of channels depending on their target: social media, email, targeted ads, focus groups, test panels, events, etc. But how do you engage with customers in the context of innovation when you’re either looking for:

The world is turning to Technology (Big Data, Data Mining, Analytics, Blockchain, AI) to answer their most pressing questions. Yet, according to a PwC survey, most CEOs are concerned that despite the availability of technologies and services, they’re not exploiting their data effectively enough. Companies have tons of data but most of them don’t use it well enough yet. And we all know that data can quickly become obsolete.

Will you answer all your questions through Technology? Or had you rather invest into adding more humanity and authenticity into your brand?

“Customer Engagement is about relationships - communities can help!”

Customer engagement is about creating and nurturing relationships with those that most value your brand and products.

Should you call on your customers only when you need answers? Or should you instead keep open channels to collect feedback and ideas continuously on key issues?

Collecting feedback is probably something you do already. Innovation is also something you do. But are they integrated so that you can centralize every piece of information in one single repository , and decide on how to exploit it?

What matters is that you be given the flexibility to get the information you are seeking for at the right point of time. You may for instance be looking for feedback on a product and getting ideas for the next features to prioritize your product development roadmap.

This is something IdeaScale did with Techsmith. They created a direct channel of communication with customers not only to get feedback but demonstrate a real customer-centric approach. [Full Use Case]

Similar practice took place with OneBusAway. The team of students at the University of Washington, with limited resources, collected a couple hundred ideas and developed new app features as a result of engaging directly with app users. [Full Use Case]

These are rather simple ways of getting customers engaged in short-term, tactical, incremental innovation. ‘’Quick wins’ is typically what companies seek when embarking on the Open Innovation journey. It is however also possible to have a longer-term, more strategic approach to innovation through building customer communities.

IdeaScale worked with EA Sports with that goal in mind. Over the years, EA SPORTS has cultivated an active community of super fans called Game Changers. It’s a place where new ideas are generated and new customers become engaged. [Full Use Case]

Innovation doesn’t thrive on the urgent need to find the next best idea. It comes from a large, continuous flow of ideas that develop from the input of community members.

From a marketing standpoint, this is a rather important argument. You can’t build brand loyalty through occasional campaigns or from storytelling only. You build brand equity from continuous engagement with people that value your brand and products the most and you take action to gain increased engagement as you grow your community.

To achieve successful engagement requires a 2-way channel of communications that can be implemented with IdeaScale and integrated with existing web and social media channels.

Such a long-term, strategic crowdsourcing practice presents many advantages:

• Create continual brand value with customers.
• Feed your Innovation teams with a continuous flow of innovative ideas, which can be easily evaluated and prioritized with your community.
• Keep ahead of trends and build new strategies based on real-time customer insights.
• Practice further Co-Innovation methodologies such as Design Thinking workshops, Lean Startup or Business Model Innovation with key customers and engage them into an end-to-end innovation process.
• Make customer centricity your company’s DNA and use the wisdom of the crowd to build a trusted relationship.

In nearly 20 years, half of Fortune 500 have disappeared. Furthermore, a study from the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University estimates that 40% of companies in today’s S&P 500 will not exist in 10 years. Nowadays companies can’t afford to wait for the next best innovation or technology to break through.

In fact, they don’t even need to invest huge budgets in startups to gain new market share and stay relevant. They don’t need to strategize for months in boardrooms to decide where they should go next. They only need to open up 2-way communication channels with a broader set of goals within an integrated environment

Executives have to rethink their operating models – but do it collaboratively. As they go through this exercise, they ought to keep a customer-centric focus and remember to openly validate choices with customers (and other stakeholders).

The deployment of a sophisticated IdeaScale environment can help companies transform the way they operate and achieve cross-functional effectiveness with exceptional ROI. Teams from different business units can easily share information and deliver on projects. Working in interdisciplinary teams and following an open innovation process helps each stakeholder to know exactly when to play an active role.

IdeaScale has developed such a flexible, powerful platform that not only helps companies look for innovations to implement, but also helps them to innovate themselves.

What if you could manage your Quick Wins and Strategic Transformation simultaneously – all in one place?

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Mindshift.One specialize in Open Innovation, Design Thinking and Business Model Innovation with some of the most exciting companies in Europe. We're also IdeaScale's Integrated Partner in Europe. Combining the powerful IdeaScale Platform with the expertise of Mindshift.One leads to successful innovation journeys.