Biz Insight
The term "prosumer" was once in vogue — a consumer who takes an active role in a company's production process.
In the service sector particularly, the consumer's role is far more participatory than in product-based industries. Mapping out the chain from customer to customer experience to purchase to customer value, an invisible thread of "participation" runs through every link. As a result, customers' own capabilities are drawn into the business itself.
That being the case, companies would do well to actively encourage and accommodate customers' desire to get involved.
The trend is rooted in a growing emphasis on experience. The ease with which people can now acquire knowledge and information has also played a major role. People today want to try everything for themselves — a phenomenon sometimes called the "experience economy."
The key tool for tapping into customer capabilities is robust interaction. To that end, companies must maximize interactive communication structures and real-time touchpoints with their customers.
This turns customers into co-creators of value alongside the company — a dynamic that allows businesses to draw on customer capabilities as a resource, effectively filling gaps the company could not fill on its own. In return, customers must receive appropriate rewards.
Companies do bear the burden of maintaining active interaction and securing customer touchpoints. The payoff, however, is more precise marketing. Both efficiency and effectiveness improve at the same time — efficiency measured by how well resources are used, effectiveness by the degree to which goals are achieved.
Hansik, or Korean cuisine, is a prime example of a service that naturally draws customer capabilities inward. Its appeal lies in the rich experiential world it opens up. Western diners in particular are captivated by the idea that they participate in the cooking process and complete the dish to their own taste. By allowing customers to add various accompaniments according to their preferences, hansik partly involves them in the preparation — unintentionally, perhaps, but effectively pulling customer capability into the service itself.
"Service is the activity of solving customers' problems through interaction with them." Those words came from Jack Welch, chairman of GE — a company whose manufacturing operations were overwhelmingly dominant — during his tenure.
freiheit@heraldcorp.com
