"The consumer is changing us". So says Andrew House, head of Sony's Playstation division as the company unveils PlayStation 4. He adds" The living room is no longer the center of the PlayStation ecosystem, the gamer is". At our market research practice at Silicon Valley Research Group, the customer is always at the epicenter of our Universe. What drives and compels the customer is what we strive to uncover and engineer into the heart of every client initiative, down to the most minute customer facing technology deployment. What then are the tenets of a consumer-centric approach? Our white paper titled "Becoming A Customer Intelligent Enterprise" sums it up nicely. Here are three core disciplines to inculcate into your company culture.
1. Practice customer anthropology. The market research field has all of us drowning in a sea of data. Don't get me wrong, Big Data has invaluable potential to improve customer performance. However, the fundamentals of acute customer observation trump volumes of data analysis when it comes the calibrations and fine tuning that make all the difference to how customers are served.
2. Manage customer voice. As Peter Young, who lectures on Social Media Strategies at San Jose State, asks: What is the (social) conversation? What customers talk about is a potent marketing weapon. And a great equalizer. A company with a relatively small marketing budget can outmaneuver better funded rivals by engineering the right social conversations. Look no further than companies like Evernote and DropBox and the market rivals they have successfully outdone in establishing category leadership against well entrenched players
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"Mr. Gorbachev-tear down that wall!" Corporate silos are the nemesis of a customer intelligent enterprise. Customer insights are typically the domain of the marketing
depart
ment-how well these are disseminated across the ecosystem determines whether customer-centricity is platitude or practice!To download a copy of our white paper titled "Becoming a Customer Intelligent Enterprise,
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Alan Nazarelli is President & CEO of Silicon Valley Research Group, a global market research and strategy development firm.
