Consumers are giving feedback and talking about products and services all over the internet, ex: social networks, blogs, twitter, forums, etc. John Caddell discusses how businesses should take a look at these anecdotes, or 'stories', gathered from social media and use it towards their innovation process in his latest post on the Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog. Here are some insights that customer's might mention in these stories according to John:
- People find our product really hard to use.
- Feature X of our product is proving more valuable than we expected.
- A group of people are using our product in an interesting way that we didn't anticipate.
Why is this information useful? An accumulation of these small anecdotes can really give you an idea of what needs to be improved. It can give your company insight on new product development, new design, product packaging, and where innovation is working and where it isn't. Customers will continue to tell 'indirect' stories to their peers on communities; it's time for businesses to start using this resource to foster ideas.