Ch 9,10

Embracing customers and transforming organization: next steps for successful development.

Chapter 9 is mainly about tapping the customers to tell you what they want and thus to enable you to innovate better products.

• customers are eager to tell you what they want

• with customers being aware, you are able to make constant improvements and innovation happens more quickly

All the cases of the chapter perfectly illustrate all the benefits you can have from involving your customers into the process. And it doesn’t matter much what tools you use (community, reviews, etc. ), you make people feel that they are listened to, that they are being important; besides they get a better product or service, exactly the one they want, and they get it fast. That’s what makes a customer happy – to realize that he not only a source of your income but an apparent participant of some process. I loved the case about the bank, Credit Mutuel. “The bank you can talk to” – so what? And the bank found a wonderful solution: it touched people’s feelings and appealed to creativity, imagination, ambitions (the phrase “if I were a banker” for me sounds like a topic of school composition “If I were a millionaire”). So it made people excited and involved. And though some answer were like from a composition, some of them were useful. But it is important not only to set a task, but to reply to it and show that it can work.

Speaking about banks. Here are 8 reasons why they use groundswell:

1. To monitor potential clients before giving them loans
2. To search for debtors and defaulters
3. To quickly exchange information between the employees of the bank, to solve problems online, for training
4. To learn about current events going on in the bank
5. To search for employees and experts
6. To popularize the brand
7. To listen and talk to the clients (to find loyal customers, to ask their opinions and suggestions, etc.)
8. To use this knowledge for the bank’s benefit and benefit of its clients

Examples of banks using Twitter:

Bank of America - http://twitter.com/BofA_Help

Deutsche Bank  – http://twitter.com/Deutsche_News

BNP Paribas – http://twitter.com/BNPParibas_com

Societe Generale – http://twitter.com/CareersSocgen

ING DIRECT USA – http://twitter.com/INGdirect   

Citi – http://twitter.com/citi

Wachovia – http://twitter.com/wachovia

The next chapter speaks about how to transform company’s work with its customers. And we get a good idea that it’s not easy and fast. There are 3 elements of this process:

-          don’t rush, move slowly step by step, let people think over all the changes

-          have a plan and a clear vision of what you want for your organization

-          get executive support

And I really like how these steps are illustrated in Dove’s case. Everybody knows that changes are always hard. People are usually scared of changes, of taking risks. You never know how everything will turn out. In this case we see groundswell is already dictating its rules to the companies and that’s why risk is worth taking. But it will take time. If you want to succeed, first listen what people want and expect from you. Then your company, its employees and executives get used to the idea of changes. And you need to be honest and open with your customers. That’s what the case with Dell teaches us.