Table of Contents
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Customer needs and priorities are continually changing.
When a business is successful, simply keeping up with demand is often the top priority. Innovative organizations understand that any sudden shift is the marketplace, technology, competitive pressure or cultural/social trends may change success to failure in a short period of time.
Case in point, iconic brands like Oldsmobile, Pan Am and Circuit City were once part of the mainstream culture, and now they are fading memories. When you partner with your customer loyalty program members as business innovators they can help you uncover petty annoyances, identify product improvements and keep you abreast of competitive influencers that you may have never considered.
Innovation Moderation
Innovation is a bold word. It can define highly innovative products that are entirely new to the world, or it can be defined as renewing existing products by modifying them to achieve enhanced results.
While loyalty program customer insight may inspire organizations to create entirely new products or services, the majority of innovations generated by customer feedback are more in-line with moderate or low innovative product adaptations. Moderate and low seem like lackluster words when combined with a bold word like innovation, but make no mistake, these levels of constant tweaks and changes are the things that make organizations adapt, meet competitors head-on and produce the cost reductions that add significantly to the bottom-line.
Reward Loyal Customers as Collaborators
The success and growth of e-Rewards and similar research companies emphasizes the value of rewarding users for their honest, dispassionate feedback.
Whether you have a formal customer loyalty program, or a simple database of customers, there is a tremendous source of insight contained within the minds and behaviors of your customers.
Enrolling customers as your innovator team members by rewarding them with bonus points, gift cards, cash or other form of payment for their services, provides a platform for honest feedback. Having actual customers review customer touch points, how they interact with your brand and informing you about what competitors do to lure them away, provides much needed insight for constant innovation.
Adapting to meet competitive offers and integrating technologies or services that your customers suggest from their experience with different industries, may not only lead to big profits, customer retention and growth, it can mean the future existence of your brand as you adapt to changing conditions.
Understanding Customer Behavior and Expanding Opportunities
Customers insight adds to the organizations curiosity and creativity as they innovate for the future. Understanding how customers interact with your brand and other products or services, leads to new opportunities or changes to your business model. For example, the growth of the sharing economy, with services such as airbandb and Lyft car sharing, may force traditional suppliers to innovate. As your loyal customers report on the reasons they may temporally defect to these innovative services, they provide insight on how to adapt to their changing attitudes. Providing incentives for customers to participate in the innovative process, provides you with a reliable assessment of their critical priorities and a view of ever-evolving marketplace from the unique perspective of your loyal customers.
