Four Golden Rules for More Customer Centricity

That the customer experiences our product at home is one of our great strengths here at Vorwerk. Thanks to our direct selling teams, customers can test a Kobold vacuum cleaner or the Thermomix®right where they would also like to use them. We would naturally like to offer our customers a variety of touch points where they can get to know our products, touch points that today’s customers have come to expect. That we have repositioned ourselves with online shops and stores in German city centers testifies to one of the many lessons we have already learned regarding customer centricity. However, the Thermomix®, in particular, shows that online is not the answer to every question because you cannot see simply by looking at it that it actually combines 12 functions in a single appliance and that preparing meals with it can be fun. During a Thermomix® cooking experience, on the other hand, customers really can experience its benefits first hand.

“Ask and win!” You often see this sentence when reading about customer centricity and customer needs and wishes. But it really should be “observe and win.” Generally speaking, customers cannot articulate their daily needs at all, let alone name a potential solution to their problem. That’s why the right market research is the key to success. The trick is to bundle the right information gleaned from market research, to ask the right big data questions [t1] and to record the needs and wishes of customers locally to deduce the relevant needs and solutions to them. Delivering recipes and step-by-step instructions straight to the Thermomix® was, for example, the perfect solution for all the people who previously had to keep on going back to consult their cookbook and losing time and sometimes also track of what they were doing as a result. A customer need was identified here and thanks to modern, digital technology, a simple solution provided.

Technology and digitalization actually play an elementary role in customer centricity because more and more often, they are becoming key selling points for prospective buyers. This is already evident with automobiles, where connectivity has joined the classic buying criteria, such as engine power and brand. But we also see it now in kitchen appliances, such as the Thermomix®, where connectivity with the Internet of Things is a significant USP. In the future, the desire for interconnected products will increase significantly, not stopping at our Kobold cleaning products. However, this applies only if the technology is convenience-oriented, satisfying the need for simplicity and time saving, like that already featured in our VR300[HA2] Robot Vacuum Cleaner, which reduces the users’ workload and which they can operate remotely when on the move thanks to app control. Senseless gimmick features, on the other hand, will soon disappear from the market.

Applying convenience and trends from other product and service sectors to our own product portfolio is a further challenge of customer centricity. But that doesn’t mean we have to follow every trend or satisfy every customer wish. Customer centricity in no way means “EVERYTHING for the customer,” you see. It’s all about getting the balance right, about quality instead of quantity. Sustainable, successful companies need enduring business cases and also profitable revenues if they are to continue investing in innovative and customer-centric solutions.