ARTICLE: It seems designers are falling into a rut. We are doing the same type of research as our competitors and expecting different results. Sounds like a variation of Albert Einstein’s “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
You need to leverage the relationship with your customers in order to differentiate your business in the marketplace from the rest of the pack. You can achieve this by placing customers at the center of your strategy and focus on creating a unique value through experiences, services, and products tailored to their needs and desires.
“Customer as competitive advantage” by Helge Tennø takes a look at what designers are not doing different from one another when it comes to research and how it affects the bottom line. To avoid this designers need to
- Create a Customer-Centric Vision
- Leverage Customer Insights
- Conduct Customer Surveys
.To use customers as a competitive advantage, you need to shift your focus toward a deeper understanding and delighting your customers and turning their satisfaction into a core business driver. You need to define your company’s mission around delivering value to your customers.
Helge reminds us, “If we use the same engagement metrics as everyone else we will create engagements similar to everyone else. Instead the team should identify customer value and measure its ability to deliver on the customers ability to get what they need that delivers value back to what the business needs. If we want to design something for our customers, then what is important to them is far more important than what is important to us.”
This article has a lot of good information and well worth the read.
Let us know what you think in the comments.
