The developments of the World Wide Web and especially of Social Media are responsible for a profound paradigm shift: Whereas up until recently, companies were able to push products into the market, customers are nowadays the driving force of innovation. In order to create meaningful products and services, companies therefore need to pull data and ideas from the customer. With this shift in mind, companies have to understand that a compelling Customer Centricity is not just the key to staying relevant in a dynamic and disruptive market, but is and will be the major factor of a successful business. The increasing importance of putting customers in the center is also gaining momentum in scientific research and is summarized in the Customer-dominant Logic. Ultimately companies have to understand that they create value for and with their customers and not just for themselves. In order to create lasting value and to ensure a Customer-dominant Logic, Social Media Monitoring is a powerful tool.
“There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here´s the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf.”Jeff Bezos 2017
Social Media Monitoring provides companies with the opportunity to be a part of the user´s daily life and to show customers that they take their opinions and considerations seriously. Furthermore, Social Media Monitoring helps to pull relevant data out of social media channels and gives companies revealing and context-based insights into the user´s life. This supports companies in implementing a context business, which puts customers in the center and helps to create individual services based on the specific context of the individual.
In order to do so it has to be understood that Social Media Monitoring is not a single process with a defined ending, but a continuous process which perpetually re-evaluates customers’ content in order to adapt to the changing environment of the customer. A company therefore should never be satisfied with the status quo. The questions they should be asking themselves are: Is what we are doing working? And: How can our services be adapted to the changing individual customer context? The following figure summarizes these principles and visualizes the iterative character of customer centricity:
THE VALUE CREATION PROCESS
In order to achieve a deeper understanding of customer centricity and to successfully implement a customer-centered perspective, the overall basic principle of value creation has to be understood and needs to be deeply grounded in the companies’ genes. Unlike the recent prevalent assumption of value being solely created by the company, it is nowadays widely accepted that value is always co-created and that customers take a crucial role in the value creation process. In this understanding, the company acts as a value facilitator, who offers a value proposition to the customer. It is the customer who defines the company’s proposition and the value which is derived from it. In this defining process the customers take previous experiences, individual skills and the overall environment (offline and online) in which they interact into consideration.
Nevertheless, the company is not without opportunities in this phase of creation and can influence the customer´s value perception with context-based offerings. In order to do so, companies require in-depth information about the customer. Here Social Media Monitoring comes into play, helping to gain pertinent customer information. With this information, companies can personalize messages and services and show the customer that they are determined to provide the best customer experience for every customer. Being able to understand the manifest needs and to anticipate latent wants of the customer will give companies a competitive advantage to outperform competitors.
CUSTOMER CENTRICITY WITH “MY STARBUCKS IDEA”
An excellent practical example to underline the principles of customer centricity is the American company Starbucks. Starbucks invented the website “My Starbucks Idea” where people are invited to submit ideas about products or experiences they have with Starbucks. With “My Starbucks Idea”, Starbucks provides a platform for customers to share their values, believes and criticism and furthermore present themselves as an authentic company which puts customers in the core of their business.
Furthermore, Starbucks is exceptionally active on social media and replies to almost all comments, regardless if negative or positive. In doing so, Starbucks is able to be a part of the customer’s individual context and actively shapes the creation of value. The success of Starbucks proves that leaving the ivory tower and creating a positive feedback atmosphere can lead to exceptional customer loyalty. However, it is important to understand that Social Media Monitoring should not be treated as a panacea for outstanding individual services, but as an essential tool in applying a customer-centered perspective. By closely monitoring customer feedback and following a stringent customer centricity, all companies can have the ability to stay relevant in the competitive business world. Furthermore, they will be able to create lasting value together with the customer and drive invention on their behalf.
This article was written by our guest authorLukas Mohr. He is a PhD student at the chair of Marketing, Innovation & E-Business in Trier and researches about digital services. Since 2013 he works as a freelancer for CURE.
