How to Gain a Competitive Advantage on Customer Insights HEAD TOPICS
How to Gain a Competitive Advantage on Customer Insights
10/21/2022 7:52:00 AM If customers don t trust you they re not going to open up
Source Harvard Business Review
If customers don t trust you they re not going to open up To stay ahead of competitors, companies need to implement a system of privileged insights: unique and relevant information about customers that competitors don’t have access to. Based on research into 12 companies, the authors detail the ways companies can gain their own privileged insights — including creating a more robust and engaging customer service experience, integrating customers into product and service development, and observing and interacting with customers while they use products. They also detail various best practices. The first is to build trust. Customers that see their lives or businesses intrinsically linked and improved because of what a company offers are much more likely to engage and more willing to exchange unique information and insight into their core needs and challenges. The second: Privileged insights should be embedded into existing customer touch points (e.g., customer service, warranty support, product delivery, etc.). And third: Every business unit should be empowered to make decisions based on these unique insights. Unlike market research, privileged insights provide intel on your customers’ real needs, desires, and experiences. These insights can be gained in a variety of ways. Generally, it requires engaging with customers in ways that directly build trust and value. This might include offering services and solutions that go beyond products, creating a more robust and engaging customer service experience, integrating customers into product and service development, and observing and interacting with customers while they use your products. Read more:
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Liz Truss quit on Thursday after the shortest, most chaotic tenure of any British prime minister, forced out after her economic programme shattered the country's reputation for financial stability and left many people poorer. Read more >> What if we destroy our competitors? We could smear, defame, pay off corrupt government regulators, etc. Then, we’d be the only player and customers would have no other options. Strategy 101. Karma calls DeLorean’s response to its lawsuit ‘frivolous.’ It says S.A. firm stole trade secrets.The California-based EV maker says execs at San Antonio-based DeLorean — all former... California-based investor takes three North Texas rental communitiesOdyssey Properties Group purchased 578 apartments in Arlington and Grand Prairie. 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The Solana-based gaming platform doesn’t require players to own NFTs, while still reaping rewards. news is silent aboout this trickk arcade2earn lfg! 🔥 Ler em português Companies spend billions of dollars every year to gain information about their customers, buying data from market research firms, running study after study, and using big data and sophisticated analytical models to make sense of it all.an effort by the startup to quash the case “borders on frivolous.2:28 PM on Oct 18, 2022 CDT A California investor, Odyssey Properties Group , has bought three North Texas apartment communities with 578 units.I told her it doesn’t make any difference. However, most of this data is likely available to your competitors and not living up to your aspiration of gaining meaningful behavioral understanding of your customers. To truly differentiate and stay ahead on an ongoing basis, you need to implement a system of privileged insights — unique and relevant information you gain about your customers that only your company is privy to.” Karma alleges the DeLorean executives instead venture while still working at Karma, taking branding, design and engineering information for a DeLorean electric vehicle to the new entity they named DeLorean Motors Reimagined. Unlike market research, privileged insights provide intel on your customers’ real needs, desires, and experiences. “The Dallas region is especially compelling due to its strong job growth, fast-growing economy and low cost of doing business as compared to other metros — a continued benefit for investors in the area. These insights can be gained in a variety of ways.com: The suit filed in federal court in Houston names as defendants DeLorean, CEO Joost de Vries, Chief Operating Officer Alan Yuan, Chief Marketing Officer Troy Beetz and Vice President Neilo Harris. Generally, it requires engaging with customers in ways that directly build trust and value. If she cares about your feelings, she should respect them. This might include offering services and solutions that go beyond products, creating a more robust and engaging customer service experience, integrating customers into product and service development, and observing and interacting with customers while they use your products. In its response this week, Karma disputed giving the DeLorean executives permission to pursue outside investors. In Grand Prairie, Odyssey Properties Group purchased The Belmont, a 260-unit apartment community on Tarrant Road that was built in 1983. For our recent book Beyond Digital: How Great Leaders Transform Their Organizations and Shape the Future , we’ve researched more than a dozen companies that have undertaken significant transformation to position themselves for success in the digital age, including Adobe, Cleveland Clinic, Citigroup, Eli Lilly, Hitachi, Honeywell, Inditex, Komatsu, Microsoft, Philips, STC Pay, and Titan. It isn’t that these companies necessarily use technology better or were first to build a consumer data lake — it’s that they’re incredibly focused on wiring a deep understanding of customers into the heart of their business models, their operations, and how they make day-to-day decisions. Instead, the DeLorean executives were telling investors their venture was entirely separate from Karma, its lawyers said. They passionately focus on increasing value for their customers, all while absorbing and leveraging a wealth of information that their competitors don’t have. “Leveraging our deep experience and local relationships, we plan to implement strategic upgrades to unrenovated units at each community in order to unlock value and deliver in-demand apartment homes to the market. By doing so, they’re able to further differentiate themselves and remain relevant. DeLorean also said Karma’s suit didn’t specify which trade secrets its former executives used to develop the Alpha5, the startup’s new iteration of the gullwing roadster made iconic in the “Back to the Future” movies. However, he fell off the wagon after the wedding and started using drugs and drinking again. How can you go about building such a privileged insights system that fuels your company’s success? Here are some lessons learned from the companies we studied and more that we have worked with. Establish a foundation of trust and value Be clear about how you earn customers’ trust to engage with you, and the benefit they gain from doing so.” On ExpressNews. Dallas-Fort Worth is the with almost $23 billion in sales in the last year. This goes to the heart of how customers trust you to consistently deliver outcomes they value. Customers that see their lives or businesses intrinsically linked and improved because of what you offer are much more likely to engage with you and more willing to exchange unique information and insight into their core needs and challenges. 8, 2021, pitch that included “financial and technical information” about the proposed DeLorean vehicle. Building a foundation of trust also includes having impeccable clarity on your values, principles, and governance around how you will treat customers’ data. I have forgiven him for the past hurt and betrayals, but I can’t forget the pain. Will you use the data to only advance your own commercial position, or to improve the customer experience and benefits? Will you take responsibility to not misuse the data? Will you have strict enforcement if an issue happens? Leaders must ensure that people across the organization understand that it’s not about extracting data from people and making people the product — it’s about making customers an integral partner in the value chain.” The timeline of the DeLorean startup raises questions. Ashley Still, senior vice president and general manager for Digital Media at Adobe, is absolutely clear about the company’s guiding principle for how it uses customer data: “We are committed to data privacy and sensitive to how we use data. Responsible use of customer data can create greater experiences, but the second we start using it to gain tactical advantage, we’ve missed the mark. That was just a few months after he left Karma and while Beetz, Yuan and Harris were still employees, according to employment agreements detailed in the lawsuit.” Together with the trust and value that is embedded in their users’ experience and the value proposition Adobe offers, these practices lay the foundation on which the privileged insights system is built. Integrate how you collect privileged insights into your day-to-day actions Make the collection of insights a byproduct of your engagement and relationship with customers, not a separate process. Karma wants to keep the case in Texas. This will allow you to gain customer insights while you create value for them, be it through your physical or digital interactions. This should start with all your existing customer touch points (e. 18.g., customer service, warranty support, product delivery, etc.com: San Antonio-built 2023 Toyota Sequoia SUV begins rolling off automaker’s South Side production line DeLorean Motors Reimagined has produced at least one prototype and said it will contract with a manufacturer to produce a limited number of its Alpha5 electric coupes — priced well over $100,000 — two years from now.) and extend to many new opportunities to engage and improve your value proposition. The ultimate question you will need to answer is whether customers feel positively impacted by the information you are collecting. It’s been on a marketing blitz in recent months, including unveiling the prototype at a California auto show. Consider fast fashion company Inditex, owner of the Zara brand. Its retail employees are trained to serve as its frontline eyes and ears, tracking data, observing customers, and gathering informal impressions — all while helping customers find the styles that suit them best.” Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. The stores compile information about the choices customers make, their inquiries about missing items, and their suggestions. Are shoppers looking for skirts or trousers? Bold or subtle colors? These impressions are sent directly to a group of designers and operational experts at headquarters, together with detailed daily data on exactly what is selling and where. “We create an environment to encourage human experience and connections,” the company’s website reads, describing the interior of the Alpha5. The combination with deep insights from what people are searching for and buying online puts them at a clear advantage over online-only fashion companies. All these insights are rolled up, aggregated, scaled, and analyzed almost in real time and turned into designs for new garments or into improved production, logistics, and marketing practices.com: DeLorean rolls out prototype of its Alpha5 electric vehicle at Pebble Beach auto show Customers who reserved a slot to purchase an Alpha5 got a DeLorean NFT — a tradable, non-fungible token — in exchange. The key is in the flexibility to adapt to customer preferences and the precision to create and produce what customers are asking for, at the moment they are asking for it. At the end of the year, Inditex’s more than 700 designers will have come up with 60,000 different creations, and the stores worldwide will have received new waves of collections twice per week.” DeLorean also unveiled four one-fourth sized concept car models in August that it had designed, imagining what the car would have looked like as it evolved from the original 1970s-era DeLorean. Wire your privileged insights into how you work Put your privileged insights to work by connecting them into your operations — changing structures, processes, incentives, metrics, information flows, etc. , to enable every part of the business to make decisions that are based on your unique insights. And a recent YouTube video from the Hollywood set of a new “Fast & Furious” film appeared to show an Alpha5 model driving under its own power during the movie shoot. The most obvious (though not always well-executed) example of this involves wiring privileged insights into your company’s innovation process, by using them as the basis for ideation and looking for many ways in which customers can be integrated in the actual development process (for example, in beta pilots). But privileged insights need to be linked to many areas beyond innovation, including the determination of investments in tools and technologies that facilitate ongoing experiences, the interaction of your selling and customer teams, and your forecasting and strategic planning. The giveaways are tied to the company hitting hiring goals. Be prepared for those insights to materially change the fundamentals of your business, not just lead to incremental changes or a new feature in some of your products. And rethink how you measure the impact of your privileged insights capability; the metrics that most companies use today don’t go nearly far enough, and more innovative measures like, for example, return on experience (RoX), should be considered by companies pursuing this capability.com: DeLorean gets another $500K in tax incentives to develop electric vehicles in Bexar County DeLorean is currently working out of a temporary office at Port San Antonio. Consider Salesforce. From its inception, Salesforce has been acutely aware of the need to build its business on trust — not surprising given the sensitivity of the data customers share on the platform. The Texas Attorney General’s office last month said DeLorean had to share information requested by the San Antonio Express-News related to its incentive negotiation with the city. This values-based relationship with users allows the company to gain deep insights into what works well, what needs improvement, and additional services customers would like to get. These insights directly feed into and fuel Salesforce’s product development strategy and allow the company to extend its value proposition. diego. With a customer success orientation at the heart of the relationship Salesforce builds with its customers, the company has established a unique platform that allows it to leverage insights from customer usage data to inform strategies that enhance long-term customer value and thereby drive customer retention and growth. These insights enable Salesforce to more effectively co-develop solutions with partners and customers, tailor them to various industries, and offer them as part of their platform as new industry clouds.net. This unique system of product development and innovation fueled by proprietary customer insights is one of the key factors that has made Salesforce the fastest-growing software company of all time. The power of a privileged insights system stems from its self-reinforcing nature: The more customers trust your company and derive value from the your products and services, the more likely they are to open up and engage with you. The more they do so, the more insights you’ll be able to gain about what customers want and need; and the more insights you have and the better you are at wiring those insights into everything you do, the more you can improve your customer experience, products, and services and build additional trust and connection with customers. It’s a true flywheel. For the flywheel to work and fuel your company’s success, you need to work on all three of these areas, starting with a brutally honest assessment of the real gaps you may have across each area and realizing that creating a system of privileged insights will not come without meaningful transformation. It’s easy to see how neglecting one area is going to keep the whole system from working. Indeed, if customers don’t trust you, they’re not going to open up. If providing insights is a one-way street, it may only appeal to the most loyal and passionate of your customers. And if you’re letting your customers down and don’t act on the feedback, you will most probably not get a second chance to get it right. This is a big task and requires a fundamentally different way of thinking about data, research, and the entire cycle of touch points with customers. But it’s one that any company in any industry needs to take on to stay relevant. We can think of no other capability that is so universally needed. HBR Learning Performance Measurement Course Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning’s online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Performance Measurement. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies. Free for a limited time! How to set the right targets, collect and analyze data, and improve key metrics. .