4 ways to change your customer relationships forever

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Forget about customer satisfaction. Your real goal ought to be customer transformation.

Every now and then you come across an idea that is just brilliant. Do yourself a favour and read a Harvard Business Review post from a couple of years ago called, "Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?" In it, Michael Schrage a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, argues that just meeting the needs of customers or even addressing their pain points, isn't good enough.

His assertion is that most business owners see customers only as a means to the end goal of growth or profitability. True success however comes from making the customer the raison d'etre of all business activity and asking the question, who do you want your customers to become? Shrage turns the classic approach to innovation on its head. Instead of asking how can we design better products and services, the more powerful question is how can we design better customers. Think about Apple. Ten years ago, their customers never imagined the ways in which a smartphone would impact their lives.

It's a powerful idea. But does it have practical application for the 99.9% of businesses that lack the god-like aura of Apple? Can a manufacturing company or a professional services firm really transform the lives of its customers? The answer is a resounding yes but it demands that you answer an incredibly challenging question. For my business, what do I want my customers to become? Do you want them to use products differently or implement new processes or take a more sophisticated view of an industry? Another way of looking at it is what is the intersection point of a better state of being for my customers and improved business performance for me?

The path to changing the reality of your customers begins with a very practical question. How can you  begin to transform the lives of customers today? Here are 4 ways.

Engage. You can't begin to think about making customers' lives better without knowing who and what your customers are today. Give them tons of opportunities to tell you about what they want and need. That can be done using social media or various forms of market research. Or better yet, go out and meet with your customers. In person. Nothing can replace the power of a face to face conversation.

Inform. Make sure your customers are up to date with the latest trends and best practices. Yes, they should be subscribed to your blog and receiving of all your case studies. But you can also point them to other sources of information – industry sites and newsletters, conferences and webinars for example.

Connect. Create communities for your customers. Give them the opportunity to talk to others in the same industry or those from different industries with similar challenges. How? You can create online forums or social media communities. But the low tech approach may be the best. Introduce your customers to other customers – one-on-one or in gatherings. Enable them to develop the relationships that will make a difference to their business.

Inspire. Help customers set the bar higher. Empower your customers to see beyond their current realities and imagine something better - whether its a new product, process or ultimately better results. Provide your customers with white papers that detail the cutting edge of the industry. Connect them to inspiring people. Talk to them about – or better yet introduce them to – businesspeople who dared to dream. Share your own aspirations.

The reality is that by making your customers both the means and the end goal of business success – by putting them at the very centre of what you do, you not only have the potential to transform your customers, but you will create a truly powerful relationship with them. No pricing strategy, customer satisfaction plan or quality assurance program can match the impact of transforming the lives of customers.

What do you think?

Is the goal of customer transformation reasonable and attainable? How would you achieve it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Five steps for converting failure into success in 2012

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How are you going to convert the failures of 2011 into success in 2012?

Many of today’s greatest business minds extol the benefits of failure. A search of the Harvard Business Review site yields hundreds of articles and blog posts about failure with titles like, “Strategies for Learning from Failure” and “Enjoy the Fun of Failure.” I even stumbled upon failuremag.com – a website devoted to failure.  There is clearly much to be gained from making mistakes but as I reflected upon the ups and downs of 2011, this was the thought that came to me:

Past failure can only lead to future success if you’re prepared to forgive yourself.

I know it sounds self-help-ish and the truth is that it does borrow from some insight I’ve gained from other parts of my life. Many pundits make it seem like failure almost magically leads to success. But I think there’s a strong business case to be made for the process of forgiveness being the only means by which failure can be converted to success. Here, then are my five steps to business forgiveness and success in 2012.

1. Acknowledge you have failed. Many initiatives die with a whimper and not a bang. You don’t officially declare them deceased; you just stop working on them. They gradually disappear from your to-do lists. Sometimes, we’re given a helping hand in accepting defeat. A domain renewal notice or worse, a loan call, may force you to make a decision. Otherwise it’s easy to procrastinate. So, start by taking an honest look at all the projects that you started in the past year (or earlier) and officially brand those that aren’t going anywhere a failure. You can’t possibly benefit from the experience until you do that.

2. Do the post mortem. Now that you’ve deep-sixed a number of initiatives, take an honest look at what went wrong. What could you have done differently? Even if on the surface, your action or inaction didn’t lead to the project’s demise, it’s worth it to think creatively about missed opportunities. You may want to wait a while before doing this. It may take some distance before you have the objectivity to be brutally honest. Alternatively, you may want to enlist the help of others and have them give you their analysis.

3. Take responsibility. Calculate the cost of the failure – in dollars, in time, in relationships. Don’t forget about the opportunity costs – other projects that lagged or languished. Don’t spare yourself. You need to know the real consequences of initiatives that have gone south.

4. But give yourself a break. First of all, there were probably lots of things that you did that were perfectly right. Take credit for them. There were likely many mistakes that you made that you couldn’t possibly have avoided. You may not have had the right experience. It may have been the first time using particular skills or levels of complexity. There may have been key information that you could only have known once you started.

In all likelihood, the actions of others and just plain luck also played a role. It wasn’t all your fault and you needn’t feel guilty for those things over which you had no control. This kind of analysis may allow you to see important signposts in future projects.

5. List the lessons learned. Now you’re at a point where you can really learn from your mistakes. Sum up the process above by formally or informally taking stock of the knowledge and experience that you’ve gained. More importantly, consider the ways in which you can put it to use on current and upcoming projects.

There’s inevitably a great deal of guilt and regret associated with failure. Taking the steps above will allow you to dispel those emotions, forgive yourself and truly convert failure into success in the coming year. Enjoy 2012.