provision of IT-resources and applications on-demand for usage-based prices - allow for the acceleration of the time-to-market and the development of new applications and thus enroll new digital offers worldwide within minutes. Due to the usage-based availability of IT-resources such as the infrastructure (server, memory), as well as platform offers, services can be developed and innovations advanced in cost-efficient ways. Usually these are the strengths of start-ups that are available to large companies via cloud-services. This agility, which is typically known from software development, is not only a method, but also a disposition and a culture in which adjustable, interdisciplinary teams complement the hierarchically coined structures and focus their development on the customer (see also: customer-centered focus of a company). Real-time processes and agility are crucial when it comes to modern supply chains that are influenced by the paradigm shift in the trade between companies (B2B).
The commercial success of businesses is going to depend on their ability to know and understand the individual needs of customers and decision-makers in order to be able to develop and sell recoverable services for them. Agile product development focuses on the customer benefit and sets manageable goals. Development teams concentrate on products and solutions that create a surplus value for the customer. To achieve this, the customers are incorporated into the development as early as possible, so that their feedback can be considered in the next steps.
Product functionalities that the customer is not interested in will then be modified or left out accordingly. At the same time, through big data analytics, the customer journey will be analyzed along touchpoints with a product, brand or company all the way to the desired target action. Common target actions are purchases, orders, interactions with the company and product, as well as requests. Despite 'big data', the success rate of innovation has been shockingly low for decades because marketing managers and product developers focus too much on customer profiles and meaningless correlations of records instead of figuring out what it is that decision-makers look to attain in certain situations.
It is less about the features of a customer that determine his desires but more about the tasks that they want accomplished in a B2B and B2C surrounding. The customer is not aware of these sometimes complex tasks, so they need to be detected by the company. For example, consumers do not only take cough medicine when they are sick, but also if they just need a good night's rest. Des Traynor, founder of the IT-business Intercom, points out four tasks that his company's customers really wanted solved:
1 Show me the people that use my product and what they use it for
2 Help me approach these customers
3 Help me broaden my knowledge with the help of comprehensive feedback from users
4 Help me help my customers and solve their problems
This resulted in a software that assists companies with staying in contact with their customers through their website, mobile apps, e-mail and messengers.
As an example, the energy revolution forces suppliers to face enormous challenges: Because the production of energy has become almost free and consumers feed in electricity into the network, electricity and gas may be offered in unlimited plans in the future. Therefore, energy suppliers will be required to differentiate and offer their customers additions, such as a secure data access, entertainment without commercials, smart-home applications and other convenient and technological extras that consumers can pick freely according to their needs. A personal app could show when the e-car should be charged according to the hourly energy price or which saving opportunities for electricity there are for a certain time depending on the weather forecast. Individual ratings and usage-based billing can help energy suppliers with the development of new offers and the promotion of customer loyalty. The offering of a customer portal can provide consumption data in real-time in order to avoid surprises in the following bill. This creates trust as a central surplus value.
A radical customer orientation means to initially show interest in the customer, because decision-makers nowadays are able to obtain full transparency about their suppliers and change over to a different one if they are discontent with their appearance, quality and service. The keyword, as well as the most important requirement when it comes to the selection or deselection of offers, is relevance. Correctness as another criterion means to emerge ethically and price-competitively on the market. Security in the digital world will be a crucial benefit argument, as people carry the basic fear of losing personal information to other people or institutions without their consent. The basic demand in the age of digitization is therefore to put all data into a secure system and store it without any danger (e.g. by hackers).
So far, nobody knows what the models for a world of digital providers look like, but energy providers need to start thinking about this transformation, as well as which new business models and products will help secure their profit. Additionally, the desires of customers in the digital age are not only about functionality, but also about emotions, which you have read about already. Furthermore, managers find the best customer benefits of their offers via benefit elements that fulfill functional and emotional needs, the need for recognition, as well as the desire for life changes. The combination of these elements strengthens the customer relationship and the desired growth in sales through product development, pricing and customer segmentation.
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