To deliver winning innovations under ever-changing market conditions, you need the right tools to work with an increasing list of stakeholders to address complex, often interconnected demands. Let’s explore how the development team can tackle the challenges in customer centricity, sustainability, product lifecycle, and supply chain while improving decision making and operation efficiency.
Gone are the days of “sell and forget”. Companies recognize that they need to stay engaged with the customers for a greater share of aftermarket revenue and better cross- and up-sell opportunities. Since customers experiences the products through both functionality and services such as warranty and issue resolution, they are valuing high level services maximizing the equipment uptime in addition to product features and prices. As you move through the product development stages, customer experience and customer value should be the top priority in the decision-making.
We all dream of coming up with a product that our customers didn’t know they need or want. But the reality is that most of our customers appreciate the incremental improvements to address their immediate needs. Digital technologies such as IoT sensors and social listening can provide you in-depth data on usage and sentiment. But equally valuable are the feedback and experiences from customer advisory boards, customer service and account team, and channel partners. Not only you can get ideas for next product releases, but you are also helping your company to strength the relationship with the customers to let them know that their suggestions are valued, and concerns addressed.
Depending on your industry, product failure can be costly to your customers or mere inconvenience. Regardless, it’s damaging to the reputation and financials of the company. Your service team is in charge of delivering resolutions to customer issues, but root causes of customer complaints, failures, and returns should be attributed to the right supply chain process including manufacturing, logistics, and product development. In addition to addressing product related design and quality issues, the product team can collaborate with other departments to implement corrective measures such as more shock absorbing packaging to reduce damage during transportation.
With the advent of digital technologies, chances are your company is exploring some anything-as-a-service (XaaS) business models to convert one-time sales into service subscriptions. These new subscription models often require new product capabilities enabled by the internet of things to support the required service level, operation efficiency, and long-term profitability. You need to work closely with the service team to identify the requirements that might have not in the product roadmap. How about the existing install base? The sales and service team need your support to formulate a service agreement to entice customers with out-of-warranty equipment or offer add-on services.