Understanding Your Customers
The man behind Christensen Institute well known for the term “disruptive innovation”, also tremendously popular for several best-selling books - Clayton Christensen himself got a few things wrong about Apple despite several other things he got right, such as Hard Disk, Steel Mills, etc.
So what were those he got wrong?
He believed iPod was seeing its demise in 2006.
He believed the iPhone wouldn’t be successful in 2007.
He believed integrated iPads and iPhones wouldn’t be successful in contrast to the modular approach of Samsung Electronics.
Horace Dediu, a prominent advocate of Clayton was quoted saying in the context of what Apple was doing right, ‘if you learned 10% about how your consumers behaved and applied the theory to your products then the same product would be more desirable to average consumers’. Such thinking is very valid even to this day.
In his last interview to Karen Dhillion (co-author for three of Clayton’s best-selling books and former editor of HBR), Clayton is quoted to have said, “I want to be remembered for my faith in God and my belief that he wants all of mankind to be successful. The only way to make this happen is to help individual people become better people, and innovation is the key to unlocking evermore opportunities to do that”. In that line of thinking...
Does your organisation or brand do more than what meets the eye, do you help your customers become better? How?
How much does your organisation understand your customers??Do you innovate with your customers, suppliers and other stakeholders?
Time, external factors, changing consumer behaviours and market conditions often create gaps in our understanding about customers, also their needs and new trends constantly emerge - what actions does your organisation take to stay up to date?
How does your business remain close to your customers? Are you innovating your touchpoints and engagement?
?Do you use appropriate techniques and technologies to measure your understanding of your customers??
?There is evidence that customer experience, loyalty and advocacy of your brand improves with understanding customer jobs to be done, customer journeys and quality customer data.
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