In today’s era, Organization focus is more on innovations. Every company is trying to create some kind of differentiation which can help them compete and move ahead from rest of the lot.
Approach adopted by the manufacturing companies are more or less very traditional where as the new economy Organizations have become more agile and open to adopt ideas from any stakeholder.
One of the leading social networking site is offering cash reward to individuals who will help in identification of any Bugs in their system. This initiative has created a lot of buzz.
Advantages are manifold- get the product tested from end users, make yourself more visible in social networking space where any positive move creates a long lasting impact on end users mind(through various discussion forum etc.). Company’s objective to create a bug free product is no more a sole responsibility of internal quality team. Instead, the end user(customer) has been involved to a large extent. This is helping them not only achieve the objective of having a defect free product but bringing in the end customer in product improvement process.
This kind of approach is still missing when it comes to the manufacturing company. They are still following the traditional mode of R&D, product development, testing and delivery in market. Customer feedback and complaints are often limited to a tab in company’s website or a toll free number. Although there is a proper mechanism to track the product specific complaints but hardly any effort put to institutionalize the feedback mechanism and tracking it to closure.
What can be done?
- Social networking platform are here to stay– These companies should be more aggressive and open to feedback/suggestions from end customers. This will not only help in creating a buzz on social network site but bring in new ideas, better suggestions from end users.
- Reward the ideas– Companies are already spending a lot on R&D and marketing. They can certainly set aside some budget to reward people who bring some constructive ideas on the table. It could be any bug identification, new suggestions on existing product or some innovative concept. Even a small but highly beneficial idea should be rewarded. If I am driving a particular model of car or using a certain soap brand, it will be very easy for me to identify and provide new ideas/improvement around that. This new perspective from someone who is not in the Company ecosystem will definitely help them differentiate. Word of mouth makes or breaks any movie box office collection and its fate gets decided in the first week itself. These products have more shelf life than a movie hence company will have time to focus on these negative/positive feedback and work upon it.
Towards the end I would like to share my first hand experience. Most of us must be using mouth wash on a regular basis. They come in plastic bottles but I never found one in ‘single time use’ pouch(just like shampoo sachet). With One time use pack, companies can definitely target traveler community or this can be used by people in any functions, restaurant etc(after lunch/dinner just use this pouch to feel fresh). I thought of sharing this existing manufacturers and went to the feedback section of two of major FMCG companies. The feedback page was not working for one them then I called the help desk and they didn’t know how to react or whom to reach. Another company told me that since I don’t hold the IP of this idea so they cannot act on this further although they acknowledged it. They never showed any intent to dig further on IP etc. Commercially I am not sure how successful it can be but the reason why I gave this real life example was to show how these companies are still living in the past where they feel it’s a particular department’s headache and not a common goal.
No comments:
Post a Comment