Tap your customers’ ideas on innovation to keep them loyal

You and I can count on our collective fingers and toes and still run out of appendages to allocate to the companies that are crying out for assistance.

You get a new product or service. Your customers love it. In fact, your customers don’t even know how they ever lived without it.

They spread the word faster than the sleep virus in an afternoon parliamentary session.

Before you know it, your customer growth numbers are higher than your blood pressure reading, your revenues are searing holes through the five-year-old financial projections and you are winning inane awards that mean absolutely nothing to Joe Blow on the street.

Then the growth invariably starts to slow down, revenues start to plateau, analysts start to spell your name wrong in financial opinion pieces and you want to throw up every time there is a board meeting scheduled.

You have no idea what it will take to get those numbers back up. In fact, you don’t know what’s making them go down but your chief financial officer is telling you something that is diametrically opposed to what the marketing director is saying.

Truth is, you introduced a new product or service and customers loved it.

They spread the word. Word got to the competition. The competition took one of two options: One — created the same product, provided a better customer experience and competed on price or two – made a better product and swore to blow you out of the water in five years.

Either way, the competition has been, currently is and will always be out to get you.

And often, the solution is sitting right under your nose. Your employees know what will make the firm tick.

Your customers know what makes them tick.

Not you there in the executive suite, fielding calls from shareholders, head office, regulators, potential investors, worried bankers, furious suppliers and all the people you’d rather see flushed down the proverbial toilet. You don’t have time to deal with all these stakeholders and still drive innovation.

Your customers know what they want, employees know how to get it to them efficiently and cost effectively.
Create the channels for getting that information.

Reward participants of those channels loudly. Demonstrate that not only have the participants have been heard but their contributions have made a direct impact.

It could be as simple as reconfiguring the kitchen staffing levels to allow for a lunch menu to be served during breakfast time.