Chris Norman, CEO Digital Reality, Inc.

Thanks!

Patricia,

I wonder is it Graham Hill that is involved with the Treehugger.com blog? There isn’t any info in the typepad link. It’s very gratifying to be compared in this way.

You’re right, it was a typo, and Outside Innovation is what I meant to say – now fixed!

I haven’t yet read Customers.com or The Customer Revolution, so I am at a bit of a disadvantage here. In the overall context, the idea of making it easier for customers to do business with you, and giving them a role in deciding how their purchases should be configured/designed, could be considered parts of a greater movement to customer-centric business strategy.

However, I would be slow to accept that there is a direct relationship between the two. In my opinion, increasing customer convenience, on its own, does not empower the customer in any significant way. It doesn’t give the customer any say in what the business offers for sale.

All of the items that I described collectively as customerism contribute, in varying levels, to the sharing of control between the business and the customer. That’s the key factor, which is not necessarily present when a business takes measures to provide the customer with greater convenience.

I would take a similar view regarding the use of more seamless multi-channel experiences. An example would be a DIY chain that allows you to purchase paint online, and then pick up your goods at the nearest branch. A seamless cross-channel event, but if you can’t order mixed paint on the website, then you’re not all that empowered.

It’s quite difficult to provide a concrete answer to these questions. There is nearly always the ‘But what about…?’ exception to every attempt to set out definite principles. As a general rule, I would say that if the customer has some degree of control over the end-purchase, then they are empowered. If they have no control over the end purchase, but the buying process is made easier or more interesting, then they are convenienced.

The use of focus groups tends to be associated with segmentation of customers rather than empowerment of customers as individuals. Of course, different business will use the insight gained from this type of research in various ways. It probably depends on the culture of the business as much as anything else. Efforts to focus on what matters to groups of customers can contribute to the development of customerist strategies, but only if the business is willing to go down that route.

One point I would like to make is that I don’t propose that mass customization, customerism etc. is useful or relevant for everything. There is no advantage to buying a blue orange. But for those sectors where a customer gains benefit (either practical or emotional) from the empowerment provided by elements of customerism, then it is something worth advocating and promoting.

I hope I’ve understood your questions – I had to think about them for a while!

Of course, I also appreciate the fact that you cite Outside Innovation as a good overview. I wonder if you would mind fixing the one-word typo in this sentence: “I would strongly recommend Open Innovation as reading for anyone interested in exploring these ideas further,” and correcting it to Outside Innovation, if that is what you meant to say!

There’s one intersecting trend here that seems relevant to me. I wonder if you agree… At the same time that we have been moving towards the ability for customers to co-create products and services, we have also been seeing a trend of increased attention to customer self-service (“make it easy for customers to do business with you”–the tagline of my 1998 book, Customers.com) and to improving the cross-channel customer experience by focusing on what matters most to each group of customers (a pattern I chronicled in my 2001 book, the Customer Revolution). Do you see a connection between the increased emphasis on delivering better experiences to customers (thru self-service and more seamless multi-channel experiences) and empowering customers’ co-creation of those experiences, as part of the same “customerism” trend?

Patty

Many of you will know the great blog of Donal Reddington, who regularly reports about developments, company announcements, and new technologies in the mass customization and personalization domain. Recently, he posted a great feature on “Customerism”…

“As we draw towards the end of 2006, It is reasonable to say that the idea of empowering customers with a higher degree of control over their relationship with business has gained widespread acceptance. This basic idea has been researched in great depth