Patty Seybold's Research

What Are Visionary Customer-Centric Execs Thinking About?

Patricia Seybold — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

How do you transform your organization from the outside in, to be more customer-centric? This is the daily challenge faced by senior executives in a variety of industries. Twice a year, we host a meeting for some of the most visionary executives in a variety of industries. They are the heads of e-business, sales, marketing, business strategy, customer experience, and product management. These are the people who are leading the customer charge in their industries—financial services, high tech, manufacturing, retail, publishing, pharmaceutical, telecoms, health and fitness, education, and not-for-profits. In the spring of 2008, they discussed over a dozen topics—many of them centered around their use of the Web to engage customers in helping them transform their organizations to be customer-outcome focused.

Making Team Innovation Work

Patricia Seybold — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

At FIRST’s annual world robotics championship, Patty and her Visionaries witnessed first hand how kids can work together while competing, coming up with innovative solutions to difficult challenges. The process by which these challenges are set up and executed provides important lessons on how to inspire innovation.
Read a sample of this report.

CohesiveFT Makes It Easy to “Roll Your Own” Virtual Servers

Patricia Seybold — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Cohesive Flexible Technologies is a software start-up whose story to-date provides six best practices in customer-led innovation.

They ran in front of the parade to commercialize what lead users (advanced IT architects) were already doing.
They added value by tackling the hardest problems – ones these lead customers were struggling with.
They provide structure and scaffolding to enable customer creativity.
They convert customers’ free prototypes into robust commercial solutions those customers can test and use.
They make it easy for lead users to share their creations and learnings with one another.
They look for patterns in the way the customers use your tools to build their tools—that’s your competitive advantage and your future direction!

B2B Firms Are Adopting Web 2.0

Patricia Seybold — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Web 2.0 concepts are more than just conceptual at this point. Savvy B2B companies are taking advantage of new technologies to offer tools that promote customer innovation. Our B2B use of Web 2.0 chalk talk provides “slideware” with commentary so that you can re-use the graphics, concepts, and overall presentation to educate others.

How Should You Manage Customer and Partner Portals?

Patricia Seybold — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

This PSG Classic report presents the do’s and don’t’s of managing customer and partner portals, including important concepts, such as designing both customer and partner portals side by side, so that they act consistently in the efforts to address customer issues; and understanding that portals are business considerations, not IT issues. Although written several years ago, the rules of thumb presented still hold true and are perhaps even more applicable to today’s portal environments.

Managing Customer Advisory Board Programs

Patricia Seybold — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Do you have a Customer Advisory Board program? If so, how well is it managed and run? Is your CAB program considered a necessary evil—as a perq for loyal customers and a duty for top executives? Or, do you harness the wisdom and advice of your most loyal customers to keep you on the right track and to help bathe your organization in customer issues and customers’ priorities? This report is a summary of current practices in managing B2B Customer Advisory Boards. It’s the synthesis of my learnings from a two-day CAB Exchange that was held in October 2007. The participants included 60 practitioners—the people who run the CAB programs for dozens of businesses. The role of CABs is changing from relationship-building to strategy-building. CABs used to exist primarily to brief the executives of your most strategic accounts on your firm’s road map and product strategy. In today’s CABs, insightful customers give you their road maps and roll up their sleeves to help you craft your strategy.

Partner Portals Should Be Combined with Customer Portals

Patricia Seybold — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The first goal of a partner portal is to support customers throughout their lifecycles. So a partner portal has, at its core, many of the capabilities that are required in a customer self-service portal. Why not combine your customer portal team and your partner portal team? You’ll save time and money and you’ll deliver a much more seamless experience to customers and partners.

Creating Customer Advisory Boards that Your Customers Will Love!

Patricia Seybold — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Why would your customers want to spend one or two days helping your executives craft or refine their business strategies? What’s in it for them? Customers care more about gaining insights from their peers than they do about listening to your executives. If you design your customer councils to help customers gain insights from one another, you can harness their collective vision to drive your company’s vision and direction. Insightful, visionary customers can be catalysts in helping to drive change. Here are some tips about how to craft an “outside in” Customer Advisory Board program.

Customer Innovation Guide: Core Competency 4

Patricia Seybold — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

How far along are you in the Open Development Continuum? Do you empower, encourage, and reward customers for extending your products, coming up with new products, and sharing their solutions with others? See how you’re doing in this self-assessment guide.

Customer Innovation Guide: Core Competency 3

Patricia Seybold — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Co-designing your company’s future with your customers is imperative to ensuring continuing innovation. Make your lead customers part of your design team and take advantage of their inventions and insights as you work on your next-generation of products, services, process, and business models. In this self-assessment guide, you can see how far along your company is in taking advantage of customer co-design.