Know-How Exchange : Other

A great question, one that actually adresses a fundamental marketing issue. If you (we) truly believe marketing is more than promotion, the answer to your question is a no brainer - by not involving the customer in the process you're not marketing anyway!

With regards to literature to help validate customer involvment in new service developemnt (NSD) you will find some in the busienss to business literature where this is not so rare as it appears to be in B2C. For specific articles, let me know if you need a hand locating them.

Also a colleague of mine has just recently completed his Phd in NSD within the hospitlaity industry (Europe), while this was not a specific theme (customer involvment) I am sure he would be able to provide additional insight.

Problems you may need to deal with is motivation of the customer to be involved ie. why would they help, remuneration and the political ramifications of managing a group involving (probably) one of your key customers in the decision making process eg. what if they are no use, or none of there input is utilised, who tells them they are wrong without wearing the outcome (reduced sales to that customer?).

However despite this, i think you are on to something and you should persevere; i think you have the makings of a comparative advantage and you will definitely engaging in real 'marketing'.

I would never advocate having customers (or a customer) within the top management layer, its great for relationship building, but opens up a 'tin of worms' as you customer will be able to see your business from the dirty end (inside), they will see where all the cracks in the business are, and worse still, may be able to see your costs and your margins!

In NPD (NSD) I do advocate customers tied into the process closely, and have worked on many developements where customers were and were not used and the successful developments always had customer involvement.

I have written articles and training material on Usabilty in development and the fact that it deals with more than subjective areas such as 'customer satisfaction' and 'attractiveness', it also deals with user performance.

I am sure that since you are looking at the subject you are aware that designing for usability will enable your customers to perform their tasks even better and may allow them to provide their customers with a better quality of service.

Customers need to involved with:

1. Requirements Specification
2. Usability design
3. Acceptance testing

I hope that this helps