How complaints boost customer-driven innovation
Turn negative feedback into competitive advantage
What is the secret of companies that successfully deliver customer-driven innovation? The review of customer complaints is an integral part of their innovation strategy. Results have a direct impact on the innovation process. These companies use every complaint as a driving force for customer-driven innovation. Their philosophy: Every complaint is an opportunity to improve product development and service innovation!
That’ s why customer complaints management is an integral part of Innolytics® Innovation Management software. In this article, you will learn how customer complaints become a valuable source of input for business innovation, process optimization and continuous improvement. Learn how customer-driven innovation enables your company to become an innovation champion.
Customer-driven innovation requires openness!
Many companies have managers or business processes for handling customer complaints. The problem is that the individual complaints remain in the minds of the people who are responsible for them. This is efficient for managing the process, but inefficient for customer-driven innovation.
After all, every innovation – such as process innovation, product innovation or the development of digital business models – begins with the analysis of problems and weaknesses. Provide information about customer complaints to specific groups of stakeholders in your company! A transparent complaint process is one of the key factors for successful customer-driven innovation!
The Innolytics® Innovation Management software allows companies to set up a process to manage customer complaints and share this knowledge among specific users. For example, employees in product development or in the digitalization division can follow customer complaints. This creates valuable stimuli for the development of customer-driven innovation. Employees from different departments can think about how they can make their products, processes or services even more customer-friendly.
Add one more step to your complaint process
Many complaint processes in companies include effective procedures for handling claims. In a multi-stage process, responsibilities are assigned, measures planned and the relevance of customer complaints evaluated. All this can be implemented with the Innolytics® software.
To become a driver for customer-driven innovation, simply add one more extra step: a process stage that facilitates a discussion about the relevance of the customer complaint for the optimization of processes, products and services. This process step is underpinned by key questions:
- What opportunities for improvement for our products and services can be derived from the complaint?
- To what extent can this complaint be generalized? Does it concern only one individual case or possibly several customers?
- What could be possible steps to achieve an overall improvement?
The Innolytics® innovation management software allows such steps to be flexibly integrated into processes. In addition, guiding questions can be defined that have to be answered at certain process steps. Many Innolytics® customers use the software to centrally manage their customer complaints and derive opportunities for customer-driven innovation from them.
Complaints are an important driving force for customer-driven innovation
In addition to trend analyses and technology management, customer complaints are a valuable source for ideation and idea generation. In innovation management, bright ideas belong to the early phase, the so-called “fuzzy front end of innovation“. In this phase it is necessary to connect various elements of knowledge, which, for example, can also originate from knowledge management, with each other. New ideas arise from the new combination of these knowledge building blocks. Customer-driven innovation can also be promoted through customer co-creation.
Ensure that regular reviews of customer complaints and the search for concrete business innovation opportunities become an integral part of your innovation process. The Innolytics® software makes it possible to turn customer complaints into the starting point for the development of new ideas. A complaint that has gone through the process can be transferred to the innovation process.
Software for Customer Complaint Management and Customer-Driven Innovation
The Innolytics® innovation software includes a plugin that enables companies to manage customer complaints: The individual steps that a complaint goes through are preconfigured. However, they can be easily adapted to the needs a specific enterprise has.
- Roles and responsibilities can be defined,
- Customer complaints can be prioritized,
- Opportunities for innovation can be derived and
Action plans can be created.
Many Innolytics AG customers use the software to manage both customer complaints and innovation. Both disciplines are closely linked. Innolytics empowers companies to efficiently implement customer-driven innovation.
