As you gear up to launch any customer co-design activities this year—whether these are VOC checkpoints for new product development, Customer Advisory Councils, customer experience improvement projects, product and service improvements, business process transformation, mobile app design, ERP initiatives, or incubated innovation projects—there are three common pitfalls you’ll want to avoid.

• Too Little, Too Late. Don’t wait until you have a working prototype or a process is ready to launch before getting customer input. Customers should be involved from the beginning.
  
  
• Poor Follow-Through/Follow-Up. Co-designing with customers will identify and prioritize a lot of action items for your team. Make sure you start working on these in a timely fashion. And be sure to keep your customer co-designers in the loop.
  
  
• Executive Veto. Make sure the powers on high aren’t going to swoop down and mandate that you do things their way rather than the customers’ way.

If you can’t guarantee success on ALL of these three criteria, please don’t recruit customers to help you. They will get all excited, and then their hopes will be dashed!

We’d be happy to discuss how to best plan for successful customer-engaging initiatives. Give us a call.

Three Mistakes that Make Customer Co-Design a Waste of Time and Money
Don’t Bother If You Aren’t Going to Take Advantage of Your Customers’ Input
By Ronni T. Marshak, EVP and Senior Consultant, January 19, 2015

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