Tom Goodwin: Think About Your Customers, Not How Your Company Works.
Author, consultant and television show host, Tom Goodwin talks about the importance of focusing on customer needs when engaged in digital transformation activities.
By Tremis Skeete, for Product Coalition
When companies decide to embark upon “digital transformation” initiatives, they are not allowed to be surprised when things go wrong — especially if the priority is to focus less on customers and more on the business operations.
This is why transformation initiatives require much more than just upgrading technology infrastructures. Just ask innovation consultant, Tom Goodwin.
For those who are not aware, Tom is the host of “The Edge”, a television series on Euronews which explores the future of business and culture through technology.
Tom is also the author of “Digital Darwinism”. Is his book, Tom applies the Darwin theory of natural selection to the world of business, and talks about ways companies can manage transformation in the economy today.
In his post on LinkedIn, Tom talks about the importance of placing the customer at the center of decisions in regard to how they transform services and foster innovation in their cultures.
Read a copy of Tom’s LinkedIn post below to find out more:
I’ve a working thesis that everything about digital transformation is wrong, including the term.
It should really primarily entirely about customer centricity, which just happens to be more vital and more rich with opportunity, in the digital age.
Of course digital era thinking can help how we make things, how we work, but the goal should really be entirely about a complete rethink and reorganization of companies around making better things, better experiences and with customers at the center.
Look at this website for a bank, it looks like the last person they think about is the customer, it’s entirely about themselves and how they want to operate.
Org charts utterly dismiss the customer. It’s called Conways law.
Consulting is almost entirely about looking at the factory of what you make and finding ways to improve ways to make the same things, we need a total reversal in how we think to focus on our customers.
It astounds me today that even blunt tools like the purchase funnel rarely consider repurchase as a huge opportunity. Car dealers seem to think driving off the lot is the end of the sales process, when it’s really the start.
It’s typically considered something a little extravagant like “innovation” and treated as a fun side thing, but what we need it’s really about a total change in philosophy towards customers being central and thinking in terms of experiences, empowered by the potential of what technology makes possible and how it changes consumer expectations and behaviors.
Think about your customers, not how your company works.
