From control to collaboration with customers - 11+1 tips for success

From control to collaborating
with customers
11 + 1 tips for success!
Andrew Cannon
CBI Cannon Business Insight
26.02.2014
Images courtesy of Lusi,
Sundstrom and Macha (rgbstock.com),
as well Microsoft and Fotolia

c b i
Cannon Business Insight

© From control to collaboration with customers : 11+1 tips for success

Control

Collaboration

Today, customers are more likely to trust the opinions of other customers over direct
communications from advertisers, and have a mass of information at their fingertips.
More and more companies are realizing that they need to have a much deeper
understanding of customer needs and expectations, and need to deliver real value.
Setting up a customer collaboration programmme is a great way to get this
understanding and to involve customers in value creation. Through such programmes
companies can earn a higher level of trust and stronger degree of loyalty from their
customers.

I hope these tips help you avoid some of the possible pitfalls and make your own
programme a great success. Good luck!

c b i


Tip 1.

Know where you are going

• Whilst experimentation is fine,
in order to be truly successful
you need to have a clear
customer collaboration
strategy, detailing what you
aim to accomplish and how.
• The plan should be integrated
into your wider market/
customer understanding
strategic plan and clearly
integrated with the key
decision-making processes in
your company.

c b i


Tip 2.

Break the journey down into
manageable chunks

• There is a risk of trying to create the
"mother of all customer
communities" in an attempt to meet
all the business needs in one leap
with one tool, and ending up with a
just jumble of chaos.
• Avoid this by breaking the plan up
into several manageable clearly
defined projects.

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Tip 3.

Set "SMART" objectives for
each project

• For each project set
specific goals that you can
measure.
• Describe the precise
impact on the business
you aim to achieve and
estimate the return on
investment you expect
from each project.

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Tip 4.

Get purpose-build tools

• There are many ways to
collaborate with customers...
social media, on-line
communities, customer
safaris, netnography, focus
groups etc…
• Select the best tool for each
project based on the specific
objectives.

c b i


Tip 5.

Be careful who you choose
to collaborate with

• Sometimes you can get away with
collaborating with your fans, other
times you might need a more
representative selection of your
customers. You might even need to
collaborate with lapsing or lapsed
customers, not to mention specific
segments of customers.
• Always make sure your choice of
collaborators is aligned with your
objectives for each project, and keep it
mind when drawing conclusions from
the findings.

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Tip 6.
•

•

•

Dig for gold

The chances are you will end up with a
mountain of data... text, images, audio,
video.... more than you can possibly use,
and certainly containing a ton of noise.
Use sophisticated analysis tools to ease
the task, and keep the focus on your
original objectives. But also keep an eye
out for unexpected nuggets of gold
within the data.
Don't be fooled by fool's gold, however.
Test and quantify your hypotheses before
making any important decisions based
upon customer collaboration data.

c b i


Tip 7.
•
•
•

Bring customers to life

Get creative talent involved in getting
the most out of the data and your
insights.
Even the best insights can be
destroyed by dull and dry
presentation.
For example, create compelling
storyboards and short films from the
data in order to really bring your
insights to life and drive your
message home… from the
boardroom to the frontline sales /
customer service teams.

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Tip 8.

Respect & transparency

• Respect the privacy of the collaborators and
be especially careful with sensitive data.
• Be crystal clear upfront on what you would
like from the collaborators and how you will
use the information and materials they
provide.
• Let them opt out at any time and give them
the right to be forgotten should they so
desire.
• Be especially careful to distinguish between
market research and marketing when
collaborating with customers.

c b i


Tip 9.
•

•

•

Give something back

By collaborating with you, customers are giving
you something which is very precious; their time.
Don't take it for granted and make sure you show
your appreciation.
This could be in the form of a financial incentive,
but customers might value other things even more
highly; exclusive information, a sense of belonging,
advanced access to new products etc... Find out
what drives your customers to give you their time
and reward them for it.
Ultimately, customers must see change as a result
of their collaboration, whether it be in the form of
new products, better customer service, more
relevant communications etc... That is the best
reward of all.

c b i


Tip 10.

Get face-to-face

• Whilst on-line communities and
other virtual collaboration projects
are great, nothing beats getting
close up to real-life customers,
whether it is going shopping with
them, talking to them in their own
homes or attending focus groups
for example.
• Make it one of your resolutions for
2014 to experience your customers
first-hand.

c b i


Tip 11. Don't skimp on the
resources
•

•

•

If you've gone to all the trouble of creating a decent
customer collaboration programme, don't try and cut
corners in the execution just to save a few thousand Euros.
Instead go back and work on your ROI for each project. It
might better to skip a couple of the projects and
concentrate on those with the best returns.
It is easy to under-estimate the time and effort needed to
moderate, do the analysis and create high quality output in
these types of projects. Sometimes it makes sense to do it
all yourself, others to delegate all or part of the project to a
professional. Horses for courses.
If using an external partner make sure you test them out
first on a pilot project and then, if satisfied, commit to a
long-term partnership. There is a steep learning curve on
collaboration programmes and you don't want to spend all
your time bringing people up to speed.

c b i


+1.
•

•

•

•

Have some fun!

Be sure to make in fun for the customers
participating. It might be life and death for
you (although I guess not), but it certainly
shouldn't be so for them.
Build in some fun tasks to each project and
use gamification techniques. I guarantee they
will make stronger contributions if they are
enjoying the experience.
I'll bet they'll even talk positively about your
company afterwards, and you know just how
much positive word-of-mouth is worth 
And finally, have fun yourself when
collaborating with customers. Relax, open
your mind and enjoy all their seemingly crazy
ideas! There might not be so crazy after all.

c b i


About CBI Cannon Business Insight
• Set up to help clients use market
and customer understanding to
make better business decisions
through:
– Tools and solutions
– Consulting and training

• Run by Andrew Cannon

– 25 years experience with market
research and customer insight on
both the supplier and client side

c b i


From control to collaboration with customers - 11+1 tips for success

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From control to collaboration with customers - 11+1 tips for success