By John I. Todor, Ph.D., Author of Addicted Customers (www.AddictedCustomers.com)
The “Geeks in Toyland”
article in Wired magazine is definitely worth the read
(www.wired.com). This shows what happens
when customers become highly engaged in an experience with your product.
Admittedly, the story is about Lego’s Mindstorm product, which requires
engagement to use it. But, just imagine if you had any customers who were
anywhere near to being involved—the pay-off would be fantastic!
Here’s the gist of the
article. Lego hadn’t released a new version of their Mindstorm configurable
robot kit for sometime. Before they even started designing the new version they
reached out to their most engaged customers. They knew who they were from users
group functions and competitions. A brief email from the product manager
basically said, “We have an opportunity for you here, but can’t tell you
anything until you sign a nondisclosure agreement.” Doesn’t sound too inviting
but it did get the attention of a number of committed Mindstorm users. So
committed that they willingly gave Lego product development help for free.
Actually, they even paid their own airfare to Lego’s headquarters in Denmark.
As one enthusiast put it, “They’re going to talk to us about Legos, and they’re
going to pay us with Legos?” “They actually want our opinion?” “It doesn’t get
much better than that.”
This level of engagement
rarely happens on its own. Over the past few years Lego has made a concerted
effort to connect customers to their company. From my perspective on
cultivating “Addicted Customers” (www.AddictedCustomers.com),
Lego played the trinity of Know to the hilt. They used various vehicles like
websites, members-only products, theme parks and customization programs to help
customers learn how to get more out of their Mindstorm product (know),
stimulated creativity and exploration (know-how) and provided ways for the
customers to learn more about the company as they learned more about the
individual customer (reciprocally known).
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