Co-Creating Learnings From Customers

When we seek to learn, we look for resources individually, and, if we are blessed to be working in an organisation which invests in employee learning, we seek to make the most of available opportunities.

- Dipankar Das

Of course, organisations are replete with latent knowledge too, which if harnessed, is a great repository for employees to learn from. Another source of knowledge which the Learning and Development team does not frequently tap (unless a wise Operations executive is after you to do so), is the knowledge that customer interactions provide. It is strange, but true that very few organisations have any formal mechanism to learn from their customers. And yet, all the learning, all production in an organisation is ultimately geared to attract the customer, but, opening a channel of learning for customers, nah! that is infra dig! Well, this is an idea whose time has come for L&D.

Beyond Market surveys

Organisations have been picking the customer's brains with market surveys, seminars, and, many other mechanisms for feedback. But, the time has arrived to switch over to feed-forward, rather than feedback, and, seek inputs even before your product or service is formalised. A typical example to this would be Yahoo Mail. Till some time ago, Yahoo Mail had 'Beta' written on top, suggesting that the product was not fully completed, but, was work in progress. Yahoo was learning from the usage patterns as to how customers operate emails.

This is known as the process of customer co-creation, one that involves engaging a potential customer in the development of new business offerings. Using prototypes, customers explore alternative futures and actively shape win-win propositions. It involves putting some small experiments in front of potential customers, observing their reactions, and, using the results to iterate your way to an improved offering.