Customer Idea: Your key to Innovation

Kim Chan

14 years ago

The importance of the customer idea

Customers are better at coming up with innovative ideas about the product or service they are using, than the employees who work at developing them. While employees may predict downsides and obstacles, the necessary work routine, approvals and budget act as a restraint and prevent employees from coming up with new ideas. This goes to show how important a customer idea is to a company.

An article on ecommercetimes.com illustrates a great example of how important a customer idea is:[An insurance company’s customer] resolved the online payment issue by taking a screenshot of the company’s website and suggesting the kind of changes that needed to be made and where. His solution was to include a box for an alternate mail address where the customer could mention his official ID. The customer provided this suggestion through an email to a client service desk where the customer service representative took it as the right suggestion and routed it to the right channel. When the idea was finally implemented, the insurance company found 10 percent more customers making their payment online within the due date.

Capturing the customer idea though the right channel

According to Forbes.com, 47% of customers say they don’t believe company executives understand their experiences and 41% of the customers who take the time to complain don’t think companies listen to or act on their feedback. These are high numbers, considering that a customer idea is what will drive a company’s success. As the market gets more and more competitive, businesses recognize that it pays off to listen to customer ideas and are reaching across different channels to do so. They may set up help desks, call centres, or use feedback software and social networking sites.

Customer ideas are often not captured through the right channels. A customer idea may be what a company is looking for. However, a call centre representative may not know how to implement it, or who to pass the idea on to. Not all customer ideas will get implemented, however, it’s important for companies aim for customer-driven innovation, and find the best way to capture and implement ideas that will satisfy customers and strengthen their business.

OneDesk: A customer idea capturing platform

Using OneDesk, companies can easily capture customer ideas across all channels, into one single application. Its customer portal makes it easy for organization members to receive, classify and assign the idea to be implemented. Companies can also choose to keep customers updated on the idea they submitted throughout the development process. More information on OneDesk’s customer portal can be found here.