Best Practice Ideation Co-creating with Social Customers for Increased Competitive Advantage

Best Practice Ideation Co-creating with Social Customers for Increased Competitive Advantage

Introduction
Customers enjoy providing feedbackespecially when they feel someone is listening. If you ask them, your customers will tell you what they think of your current products, which product enhancements and new features they want, which new services theyre most likely to use, which topics theyre interested in hearing abouteven what you should call your next product. With advances in technology and the strong cultural shift toward online social activity, engaging customers for feedback and input has never been easier, less expensive, or more effective. The social web makes it easy to ideate with social customers wherever they arein customer communities, on Facebook, and on Twitter. Whether through a formal idea exchange or a structured plan to capture customers ideas across social channels, turning to social customers for input and feedback accelerates innovation, mitigates risk, and increases competitive advantage.

Ideation is the capture of customer feedback and input in a systematic way, identifying the most important ideas, and providing feedback and encouragement to keep the ideas flowing.
Forrester Research, Inc. Analyst, Doug Williams, points out in his January 28, 2011 Forrester blog posting, Why You Should Use Co-Creation To Build A Better Product In 2011, that a majority of companies are not yet using social technologies to involve consumers in the product development process, but that will soon change. Forrester expects an increasing number of companies to begin experimenting with social customer ideation in 2011or risk being left behind while their competitors move forward. Indeed, Lithium has found that a number of our customers are dabbling in ideation even though their customer communities were not intended for such. In a recent Social Customer survey, we found that although customer feedback and ideation were an intended benefit for 46% of communities, it was realized by 78% of communities. Ideation emerges as a natural downstream benefit of customer communities. Brands are more likely to harvest and consider ideas from customers they trustwho engage in a sustained dialog with them. Customers are more likely to trust ideas from peers who have proven themselves reliably knowledgeable over time.

Best Practice Ideation Co-creating with Social Customers for Increased Competitive Advantage

The Business Case for Ideation

The business case for ideating with social customers rests on the same principles as other online initiatives: reduced costs, increased customer loyalty, improved customer satisfaction, and increased sales. Reducing costs. Ideating with social customers can significantly reduce the cost for companies to acquire product feedback, particularly from targeted groups of customers. Social customer ideation can help companies to validate plans, obtain cost effective fact-based market research faster than with traditional focus groups, and reduce the risks inherent in new product development. Increasing customer loyalty and improving customer satisfaction. Customers hold a more positive opinion of a company when they think the company is listening to them. Even more important to customer loyalty and satisfaction is the perception that the company is acting on customer feedback. Two notable examples of implemented ideas, Dells new Linux systems and Starbucks introduction of lid stoppers to prevent spills, have helped both companies to improve customer sentiment. Driving sales. The real-time, inarguable data that comes from social customer ideation enables companies to offer products and services their customers have already indicated they will buy. This kind of customer-centric innovation is an important competitive advantage as innovation cycles continue to accelerate.

Ideation Best Practices

If this is your first foray into social customer ideation, best practice is to start with a narrow focus, adding additional instances and broadening the focus over time. Best practices for social customer ideation and successful online communities have substantial overlap. Both benefit from thorough pre-launch planning and careful execution.

Best Practice Ideation Co-creating with Social Customers for Increased Competitive Advantage

1. Set a goal and define the ideation focus to meet that goal. Although most companies focus ideation on product feedback and suggestions, there are many ways to utilize customer-generated ideas, including: Comprehensive listening: Not all ideas need be formally solicited. Many ideas happen as a byproduct of other things. With social media monitoring, customer input can be culled from across social mediaFacebook, Twitter, blogs, and forumsidentified as ideas, and added to the ideation process. Contests or events: Typically used to build traffic to a community or energize customers around a specific event, contests and events are an easy-to-implement way to begin ideating with social customers. Examples include providing a showcase for user-submitted photos and soliciting suggestions from customers for future blog posts or discussion topics at an upcoming conference. Social polls: Short in duration and with narrow focus, social polls take the pulse of your customersthrough their comments and voteson specific ideas that you propose. You can prime the pump with a set of ideas that the company wants feedback on. Superuser focus groups: Based on a combination of reputation and activity, you can identify the most valuable and prolific ideas contributors. By inviting them to participate in private ideation, you create a low-cost, ad hoc focus group that can yield a large amount of meaningful feedback quickly. Community feedback: This type of ideation collects feedback from community members on the features and function of the community itself. Because the subject of these ideas is limited to the community itself, taking action on the most popular ones is easy and carries very little risk. The rewards, however, are high as community members see the company demonstrating its willingness to listen and respond to their feedback.

2. Define an internal process for evaluating ideas and deciding which ones merit further research. Companies that already handle input from employees or focus groups can simply adapt or build on existing processes. For companies that are new to ideation, a simple review and escalation process is typically enough to start with.

Best Practice Ideation Co-creating with Social Customers for Increased Competitive Advantage

Unlike focus groups that might be pulled together quickly and have a short life span, ideation is an ongoing proposition. As such, it requires ongoing involvement and encouragement from the company. With potential contributors waiting on the sidelines to see how serious the company is about listening, company responsiveness has a significant impact on the overall productivity of the ideation process. 3. Define a comprehensive plan for communicating with customers about ideas. Although ideation is primarily about listening, an effective and comprehensive plan for communicating back to your customers is critical to ideation success. Companies who ideate sucessfully: Lay the groundwork to attract potential contributors through direct invitations to customers, links on the corporate website, display of ideas content on other web pages, and other similar activities. Set expectations and limits clearly and accurately, letting users know how quickly you will respond to new ideas and how often you will update users about ideas that you plan to act on. Experience tells us that accurate communication on these points is essential. Explain the ground rules so that users know not only what to contribute, but also what not to contribute, what their votes mean, and how to comment on ideas. Plan for ongoing participation by the company to communicate on the status of ideas and any plans for implementation. If contributors dont perceive that the company is listening, the flow of ideas will stop, and participation will dwindle. Regular blog posts are a good way to provide progress updates or to discuss ideas that are under consideration. Publish your successes and be generous with credit for good ideasthis rewards contributors and encourages more participation.

4. Make ideation part of an overall social media strategy. Whether you are integrating ideation into an existing community or are using it as a way to start the online conversation with your customers, it should be part of a comprehensive social media plan.

Best Practice Ideation Co-creating with Social Customers for Increased Competitive Advantage

As the graph below indicates, ideating with social customers typically experiences rapid adoption as a result of pent-up user demand (a well-known computer manufacturer reported more than 2,000 ideas posted during the first week.) After the initial outpouring of ideas from your customers, its wise to have a plan in place to capitalize on user engagement by adding other social media applications such as forums or blogs, or by adding new services to engage the community that arise around your idea exchange.
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During the initial rollout of an idea exchange, you can expect to see a steep and rapid adoption. By this point, you can identify the most valuable and prolific contributors. Before participation levels off or starts to decline is the ideal time to introduce additional social media applications, such as blogs or forums, or offer new services to capitalize on the activity and interest your idea exchange has generated.

Posts

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Ideas

Time

5. Enlist the right people. Having the right people engaged in an innovation project provides essential leadership, management, and communication functions. Key participants include: 1.) A business owner who provides management support, sets the direction for the project, oversees the budget, and re-evaluates its mission and direction regularly to ensure that they remain relevant, 2.) An initiative manager who handles planning and day-to-day decision-making. 3.) One or more moderators who provide feedback, enforce rules, and help users, and 4.) Designated communicators from different parts of the company who are genuinely enthusiastic about ideation. Tip: When evaluating ideas solutions, look for software that empowers the initiative manager with a wide range of administration and configuration optionsboth for daily operations and to manage growth. Tip: Companies who ideate successfully have found that rank-and-file employees can make good moderators. You may also want to consider including them in the process for evaluating the ideas submitted.

Best Practice Ideation Co-creating with Social Customers for Increased Competitive Advantage

6. Define roles for staff and users and configure the software appropriately. Key questions to ask when launching an ideas solution are: 1. Who are the users of this idea exchange? 2. What special rights or permissions are they likely to need to be truly productive? 3. What rights and permissions will the employees who interact with the idea exchange need? Tip: Look for an ideas solution with specific permissions that can be assigned at the community, group, or individual level. 7. Create a structure to engage users. Ideating with social customers means giving them the opportunity to submit ideas, discuss them, and vote on those they like the best. The goal is to encourage your customers, even first-time visitors, to find and vote for ideas. The most successful ideation structures are accessible, easy to navigate, and allow visitors to readily discover the newest and the most popular ideas. A simple structure lowers the barriers to participation, encouraging early visitors to find a point of connection. As participation grows, you can offer your most active customers additional ways in which to provide feedback. Tip: Make sure that when usage scales, your ideation process supports the roll-out of additional features. 8. Accentuate the positive. Maintaining a positive atmosphere is also key to productive ideation. Explicit guidelines and clearly stated expectations about how participants will behave are an important first step. Equally important is ongoing monitoring and moderation to maintain a productive and engaging atmosphere. Tip: Although listening is the main function of ideation, make sure that your ideas solution includes tools for moderators to actively maintain a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere, as well as features that facilitate ongoing feedback from the company to participants ideas.

Best Practice Ideation Co-creating with Social Customers for Increased Competitive Advantage

9. Cultivate and use your superusers wisely. This is the golden rule for online communities and is equally true for ideation. Superusers are unpaid product experts and evangelists. They are knowledgeable about your products, active contributors to your forums, and are most likely to contribute the best ideas for new products and enhancements. They are motivated by twin desires to help other customers use your products and help you build better ones. The key to finding your superusers is a comprehensive set of metrics that identifies typical superuser behavior patterns and a system of public and private rewards that encourages these patterns. Tip: To utilize superusers effectively, you need a robust reputation system that acknowledges and rewards themboth publicly and privatelyas their contributions increase.

Best Practice Ideation Co-creating with Social Customers for Increased Competitive Advantage

Conclusion
Ideation is a powerful and cost-effective way for companies to co-create with their social customers, and its success depends on the flow of information between both participantsthe brand and the customer. What matters most is the quality of ideas posted, the degree to which participation is encouraged, and the number of ideas actually implemented. By giving participants opportunities to share their ideas and opinions directly with the company, ideation with social customers helps to attract more customers and build brand loyalty. Likewise, they provide companies with timely insight into the requirements of an ever-changing marketplace..

About Lithium
Lithium helps top brands find online and mobile social customers, understand their influence, and build lasting relationships. The Lithium Social Customer Suite offers comprehensive social monitoring, creative customer experiences, and actionable analytics across millions of blogs, forums, and social networking sites. Our technology is proven in high-volume, growth environments and provides security, open and custom APIs, and multi-language support. For market leaders such as Best Buy, AT&T, Research In Motion Limited (RIM), Univision, and PayPal, Lithium is the leading provider of social customer solutions that deliver real business results.

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