Exponential Everyday

10. Is your business Product, Customer, or Customer Life Centric?


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In startups, small and medium-sized businesses, the BEST and most successful are always focused first and foremost on solving a customer need and staying connected with their customers or client. Consumers are no longer ok with being seen or thought of as one or two-dimensional. The pandemic proved that several factors impact life. Hence, as we think about a business becoming consumer-centric - we need to consider how our products and services offer the consumers where they are in their life.

A recent Accenture study Called The Human Paradox surveyed consumers, and a few exciting insights popped out to me:

  • With external forces exerting more pressure, and a list of practical and ethical considerations that keeps getting longer, people face more complex and frequent decisions than ever before.
  • 72% of consumers say external factors such as inflation, social movements, and climate change impact their lives more than in the past.
  • Here are a few tactics you could try. They do require some focused efforts in your business to try out and engage with the consumer, but they can support you to move from product-centric to customer life centric:

    1. Collecting customer feedback - offer a quiz that gives them insights on themselves and recommendations; in return for those insights, they answer a couple of questions for you to know them better - understand the challenges they have or needs unmet in their life.
    2. Offer community engagement opportunities - Make leadership accessible to customers: idea and messaging boards, newsletter, and meetups, both virtual and physical.
    3. Test new product features with community users or gets input on next season's designs or new product opportunities. Or even test your marketing with those customers.
    4. Offer how-to videos through various channels: create courses, show them how to get the most benefit from the product, are their certifications you could offer
    5. Offer them not just discounts but something that HELPS them or gives them value in their life - Create tools and resources to simplify their life or enhance it (e.g., checklists, calculators, in-app lists, easy access to knowledge)
    6.  The Human Paradox by Accenture Song

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      Exponential EverydayBy Tracie Kambies