How can companies apply Lovable Innovation principles to consistently capture customers\u2019 hearts? They must build the skills to uncover, validate, and make tough decisions on customer Love Elements as the core of a Lovable Innovation<\/em> process. However, discovering and quantifying Love Elements is not obvious, since customers cannot always articulate what they\u2019ll love.<\/p>\n Based on my personal experience with clients, and confirmed by hundreds of discussions with product leaders attempting to respond to innovation challenges, here are the five essential philosophies<\/strong> to building Lovable Innovation practices that lead to lovable products and customer devotion:<\/p>\n The first philosophy is to commit to your customers. A colleague of mine, Jean-Claude Balland of JCB and Associates challenges his clients to \u201cmarry\u201d their customers. This is an important commitment to be with your customer through thick and thin. It means you\u2019ve pledged to listen to them, learn their needs and desires and find solutions to their problems. This requires you to earn their trust and so they will be more open to sharing challenges and revealing the Love Elements that will win their hearts.<\/p>\n Learning more quickly about big problems can give you the edge on discovering major opportunities like the SUV that require radical innovation, but also provides a vast array of insight into smaller Love Elements where you can apply incremental innovation. I hear many companies say something similar to, \u201cWe don\u2019t have access to our customers!\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, sometimes it does take time, new thinking, and even some creativity to gain direct access to both current and potential customers to gain this insight. Smart companies are creating customer insight systems that create channels of feedback through customer panels, online tools, and customer visits. Quicken is fabled for beating the mighty Microsoft by following customers home to watch them install and use their accounting software to gain this insight.<\/p>\n The second philosophy is learning how to listen. The second thing I often hear is \u201cCustomers can\u2019t tell us what they want!\u201d Once you have your customer\u2019s ear, listening is not enough. It takes unique skills to gain real customer insight and determine if you\u2019ve uncovered the right Love Elements.<\/p>\n Exploring customers\u2019 minds successfully requires repeatable techniques such as in-depth customer interviews, observation, or other appropriate research methods. These activities shouldn\u2019t always be outsourced to market research agencies as obtaining ongoing, high-quality insight requires that you<\/em> build a relationship with your customers.<\/p>\n As an exercise, find a customer, sit down with her for an hour and really try to listen<\/em> versus talking<\/em> to her about your plans. As you establish a trusting relationship, you will be able to get beyond her surface needs and obvious wishes. You may need to learn new methods to gain this insight, but with practice and dedication, you will<\/em> be able to get inside customers\u2019 heads. These techniques are generally referred to as Voice of the Customer (VOC) and are used by top innovators such as P&G and Toyota to define Lovable Innovations. But you don\u2019t need the resources of a Fortune 100 company to conduct good customer discussions.<\/p>\n One small health consultant in Oregon uses surveys to track customer desires and then follows up with those customers who want to talk about her products. This consistent feedback allows her to focus on new services that her customers want instead of what she, as an expert in her field, thinks<\/em> they want (And it\u2019s often surprisingly different!) The result? A thriving business because she is always on top of the latest products that her customers<\/em> care about.<\/p>\n The third philosophy is to make tough decisions that are guided by what customers really care about. Once you\u2019ve uncovered Love Elements that will win customers\u2019 hearts, it\u2019s time to make difficult tradeoffs.<\/p>\n Lovable Innovation decisions range from big strategic decisions such as \u201cshould we develop a plug-in car at all?\u201d to detailed feature decisions, such as \u201chow long should the cord be to plug it in?\u201d<\/p>\n Without having the tools and methods to rank, prioritize, and quantify your elements, it\u2019s easy to want to solve every need and meet every want. But you won\u2019t be able to. Successful products have a clear emphasis on the most important Love Elements that only you and your customers can decide.<\/p>\n Develop clear methods that focus your innovation efforts on your customers\u2019 top Love Elements, such as feature trade-off analysis and other quantitative research tools to make tough decisions.<\/p>\n Nintendo was forced to make difficult trade-off decisions between performance, design, and applications when they chose to focus on a new video game experience targeted to families. In the process, they had to abdicate the hard-core gamer market to Sony and Microsoft. The decisions have paid off with Wii\u2019s success.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re interested in Customer Experience topics, we think you might enjoy reading: The five pillars of customer experience<\/a><\/p>\n The fourth philosophy is to get the details right. Once you\u2019ve made tough decisions to focus on the top Love Elements, it\u2019s now time to get the whole product right. Think about the products we love – they all deliver a small set of Love Elements really well, such as enabling web services on the iPhone and then making the experience lovable for customers.<\/p>\n This commitment to the details allows your team to focus on making the experience of these critical products or service attributes even better\u2026 and more lovable.<\/p>\n For example, the iPod delivers the top Love Elements and has gone deeper to get the details right on the overall music experience, from opening the box to the feel of the device to downloading music with ease (I think it also has a calendar\u2026 but who cares?).<\/p>\n Netflix has gone deep into creating an online movie ordering system complete with a range of recommendation tools and simple mailing procedures. Love Element details don\u2019t stop at the product but may also include better customer service, useful accessories, and set-up improvements. Lost a part to your LEGO Power Miner set? For a nominal fee, LEGO will send you just the missing part, thus avoiding your next toddler tantrum. It\u2019s all in the details.<\/p>\n The last philosophy is following through on your commitment. If you have successfully married your customers and know what they will love (and buy), you may think you don\u2019t have the resources, skills, and commitment to meet those needs.<\/p>\n Do NOT<\/span> let these challenges limit you. If it is important to your customers (including potential<\/em> customers), take a stand and challenge your customer development<\/a> team to find solutions. Instead of hearing \u201cWe can\u2019t do that,\u201d find creative ways to answer, \u201cHow can we do that?\u201d such as finding external experts, purchasing technology, or refocusing resources from less important projects.<\/p>\n Solving really tough problems leads to radical innovation and big leaps in market advantage. Development teams thrive<\/em> on tough problems and savor the recognition for solving them.<\/p>\n The most common refrain I hear from Apple employees? \u201cIt\u2019s the toughest job I\u2019ve ever loved.\u201d That cool touch screen with expanding web pages on the iPhone didn\u2019t come without engineering angst.<\/p>\n The results of adhering to these five essential philosophies? The ability to direct all innovation efforts, incremental, radical, and otherwise on products your customers will love.<\/p>\n Lovable Innovation requires a place as a standard business process in any company that wants the long term benefit of loyal customers and great brands. Companies must focus their innovation efforts on products and services that customers really want<\/em> and then deliver the goods to earn their love. Global competition is only getting tougher and if your company cannot deliver lovable products, your competitors certainly will.<\/p>\n About the Author: Dorian Simpson<\/strong> founded Planning Innovations in 2002 to help technology-driven companies launch successful products and services through focused innovation management and planning. He has significant experience in both engineering and marketing to help build the bridge between these two critical innovation functions.<\/p>\n He can be reached at dsimpson@planninginnovations.com<\/a> or through his website at www.planninginnovations.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n QuestionPro offers some of the most advanced customer experience tools available.<\/strong> Gain valuable insights into your customers\u2019 thoughts and feelings using\u00a0<\/span>QuestionPro software<\/span><\/a>\u00a0today.<\/span><\/p>\n1. Marry your customers<\/h2>\n
2. Become a love psychologist<\/h2>\n
3. Make tough love decisions<\/h3>\n
4. Go deep with your commitment<\/h2>\n
5. Upset your development team – They will love you for it<\/h2>\n
Bottom line<\/h2>\n