How do you co-create and co-deliver value with customers?

From experience I've learned the very valid importance of sitting down - both literally and figuratively - with your customer community to understand their actual wants, needs and wishes. Making assumptions and building products/features around what you think the customer needs can lead to failed and underperforming product launches and thus wasted resources, time and money. When you fully understand what your customers value and how they think and behave you have a much better baseline to co-build and co-develop your products from.

According to me - Engaging Customers in the Design Phase: Co-creation starts at the design phase, where organizations seek to understand their customers' needs, pain points, and aspirations. This often involves direct engagement with customers through surveys, focus groups, interviews, or online communities. By involving customers from the beginning, companies can gain insights that shape the product or service's features, functionality, and overall design.

In the IT realm, the past decade has revolutionized our approach to success. Our journey shifted from isolated innovation to collaborative creation with customers. Co-creating value through shared development, feedback loops, and interactive design has become our foundation. This partnership ensures products align with customer needs. Loyalty grows as we involve them from sketches to code. Our focus is no longer just solutions, but crafting deeply personal experiences. As a new decade unfolds, this ethos remains our guiding light, turning collaboration into a way of life.

Understanding customers transcends mere data collection; it's a humanistic approach to business. It requires empathy, active listening, and a willingness to see the world through the eyes of others. In doing so, we're acknowledging their humanity, and in a world increasingly dominated by automation, this connection becomes a profound expression of respect and dignity. Imagine a guest with a strong cultural attachment to certain culinary traditions. For example, by accommodating and celebrating those traditions in the restaurant's menu, you send a message that their culture is valued and honored. It's not merely about taste but identity, heritage, and connection.

In my experience, nothing helps me understand my customers more than listening to them talk about their perspectives. Survey results and analytics are important, too. But having a rich conversation is key to truly getting into my customers shoes and identifying with what they're sharing!

In my experience - Collaborative Innovation is a MUST: Organizations can tap into the collective intelligence of their customers to drive innovation. By inviting customers to participate in ideation sessions or innovation challenges, companies can harness a diverse range of perspectives to generate new ideas and solutions.

Invite customers into brainstorm sessions. Create betas, test, and improve based on their thoughts. Use methods like workshops, online platforms, and games to make it exciting. Also, connect with customer groups to gather ideas and opinions. Co-creation with customers is a win-win, letting you use their unique ideas and insights to craft solutions that meet their needs.

In my experience this allows you to build really valuable relationships with your customers and also provide them with insights on the processes of bringing products to life. Customers usually love feeling heard and that their opinions matter. Reaching out to them and involving them is a perfect way to also keep them engaged and loyal to the product and brand.

The customers love when their Voice is heard. On top of that, you can gain a ton of valuable insights from it. Taking the customers' voice into consideration at the creation stage can keep you from many mistakes at the following stages of development, saving you time and other resources. So you need to be open-minded and invite focus groups to the sessions during the ideation stage of the product creation.

I agree, that the customer needs to be part of the process. Just be sure what kind of customer is been selected for the process. You want to tap into their creativity but try not to frustrate them. What if your customer is not the creative one?

Effective co-creation requires open and transparent communication channels between the organization and its customers. Feedback mechanisms, such as suggestion boxes, online forums, and social media interactions, allow customers to share their ideas, opinions, and concerns directly with the company.

Customer behavior in the digital age has changed radically. Today, if we look at how we research, find out about products and services and then buy, we realize how much more complex this journey made up of numerous steps, different touchpoints (website, social media, blog, physical store). Today, to deliver a memorable customer experience to our customers, every company must necessarily guarantee coverage on all online and offline channels to best support the customer journey at every stage: Awareness, consideration, Purchase and Advocacy.

True value is not transactional; it's transformational. It's about weaving the products or services into the fabric of the customer's life so it becomes a meaningful part of their journey. This alignment is not just a business strategy; it's a way of enriching lives and cultivating enduring relationships.

For me Prototyping and Testing is a definitive yes- Co-creation may involve creating prototypes or beta versions of a product or service and inviting customers to test and provide feedback. This approach not only validates the concept but also ensures that any flaws or areas for improvement are addressed before the final release.

In my experience, regular surveys helped to measure the customer experience in various touch points with the products/services and the company itself. It always allowed us to understand what was bothering the customers and contributed to solving those problems quite fast. Regular measurements also helped to view if the customers' satisfaction improved after solving the issues, as there was always a direct connection. I used regular Bottom-Up NPS surveys, combined with quarterly Top-Down NPS surveys, to measure the company's overall performance.

Is amazing when you get the time to learn from a customer. Make sure the surveys are short and concise and always try to make them in person rather than online. So much information can be acquired just from an interaction. Also, learn boundaries.

Incorporating customer perspectives into your value creation and delivery processes can lead to more customer-centric solutions, increased customer loyalty, and a competitive edge in the market. Keep in mind that effective co-creation requires a commitment to actively listen, adapt, and evolve based on the insights gained from your customers.

Learning from your users doesn't just mean knowing how to listen to them and collect data and habits. It also means changing the corporate DNA in the way products and services are defined and marketed. For example, a good practice could be, as is done especially in startups, is to create an MVP of a new product or service and have it used by a small niche of customers to take feedback and improve it step by step.

I think the above steps are a bit upside down. So here is my take: 1. Clearly define the goals and objectives of the co-creation initiative, including what specific aspects of the product or experience you want to improve or innovate upon. 2. Identify the right customers, these are individuals who exhibit a strong passion for your company 3. Provide tools, platforms, or workshops that enable effective collaboration between employees and customers. 4. Actively listen to insights and be open to incorporating their ideas and suggestions into the development process. 5. Continuously iterate on prototypes and concepts based on customer feedback, refining the product or experience until it meets the desired objectives and customer needs.

Customer obsession is about understanding their landscape, instead of pushing your product or service. With co-creation you can team up with your client and look into their value chain, gain shared understanding of their past, present and future customer and/or supplier base to see how world is evolving around them and what kind of role your company can play in that context to help, enable, elevate, empower or enhance your customer company (as well as the individual you work with) to reach their goals. It is not about greatness of your offering, it is about justifying your existence and adding perceived value to where it matters for them

Building Community and Loyalty: Co-creating value fosters a sense of ownership and loyalty among customers. When customers feel they have contributed to a product's development, they are more likely to become advocates and spread positive word-of-mouth about the organization.