Looking to launch a new product, create a niche CX, or take your revenue to a next level, try the Fail Fast Approach, says Krushna Sahoo, Director of Information Technology – Wealth & Retail Distribution at JM Financial Services Ltd.
What is the Fail Fast Approach?
The Fail Fast Approach is optimizing the speed of execution for any product or service you are planning to launch, trying to build a successful product by taking continuous incremental feedback and developing, testing, and implementing once again. Basically, reiterate the same process till your product is a success and starts creating value.
However, success doesn’t happen overnight. Building a successful product requires continuous improvement based on customer feedback.
So, what is the right way to implement this approach for any product, service, or start-up business you are planning?
- Top-line matrix
- Technology, innovation, and digital transformation
- Customer experience
You need to identify the Top Line Matrix required for the pre-launch and post-launch of your product. In today’s world, the business landscape is changing rapidly. There is a need to consider multiple factors that affect the business - launching a start-up, product, or service with new technology, customer mindset, demographic changes, a new competitor in the market having a similar product, political changes bringing new dimensions - so on and so forth.
Even if you launch the product successfully and gather a huge response in the market, you must evaluate how many customers are actually using your product and renewing their licenses. Your product should be unique and you need to identify who is your actual customer, whether this product is for B2B customers or B2C customers. Who is your competitor? How is your product beneficial for customers compared to competitor products? You need to have a user-specific UI/UX journey as a customer group and a similar mindset.
For example, if the customer is in the 18-40 age group or 60-80 age group, obviously, the user journey will be different. There are retail customers and HNI customers, your product has to be designed accordingly to provide the best customer experience to the set of customers you are targeting.
Keep in mind that people buy experiences and not only the product. You will retain your customer only when you provide a better customer experience with help of the latest technology and digital transformation. So, connect with your customers, get continuous feedback from them, and embed that in an incremental and iterative way.
The second parameter is the customer touch point. In today’s world, connecting with your customer and keeping them engaged with unique features, and ideas is of utmost importance. There are multiple ways you can keep in touch with your customers - through a website, WhatsApp, chatbot, social media like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and one-to-one interactive sessions, which will help to retain your existing customer.
I would like to add one more parameter - your organization’s employees need to be trained to provide the best customer experience. The organization’s culture should support for best customer experience (CX) and continuous improvement with help of the Fail Fast Approach.
What happens when you don’t implement the Fail Fast Approach?
If you are unable to deliver a product or service with a Fail Fast Approach, eventually your product or service will not meet customer expectations and you will lose business. Lack of technology, innovation, and ideation is the reason why most companies are unable to strike a chord with their end customers.
For example, Kodak, a technology company that dominated the photographic film market during the 20th century, was not able to meet customer expectations due to a lack of digital transformation.
Mobile companies like Nokia and Motorola were the global leaders of their time but they failed to meet customer expectations due to a lack of technology innovation.
In 2005, Yahoo was one of the leading players in the online advertising market. But it undervalued the importance of Search.
BlackBerry, a line of smartphones and tablets, was successful in 1998. They changed the game in the mobile industry by offering a device with an arched keyboard. But eventually they lost the market position because they failed to innovate and keep up with the competition.
Google Glass, the product was one of the first large-scale attempts at capitalizing on artificial reality. But when the product was launched in 2015, its high price and privacy concerns, combined with a general lack of awareness of consumer needs, never saw the product go mainstream.
Here are companies who implemented a Fail Fast Approach, met customer expectations and redeveloped their business model only to succeed.
Netflix is an example of a company disrupting an entire industry with amazing customer experience.
Ikea’s novel idea of self-assembling furniture, a cleverly planned layout and digitized supply chain helped them solve the worst furniture challenges and deliver excellent customer experience.
Uber, Amazon, Apple were able to delivered best customer experience with help of latest technology and continuously innovate with Fail Fast approach, which alternately took their business to next level and retain customers.
Key takeaway
If you would not Fail Fast, you will not able to succeed and deliver best customer experience product. The best product is not overnight job, it is a continuous effort to build a best product or service, platform with help of new technology, innovation and digital transformation. This is very much applicable for organizations or individuals looking to launch a new start up business, product or service.
