Customer Input on Product Design

Forbes is running an article on companies seeking customer input in the product design process. The article is a bit too top-down, focus-group oriented in the customer feedback it examines, but it got me thinking. One key element of corporate PR and competitive intelligence needs to be scouring forums, chat rooms, blogs and the like for similar customer feedback. I’m not questioning the value of the exercises described in the Forbes piece. Consumer-oriented companies would do well to take advantage of the unsolicited, undirected feedback that can come from those media which they do not control directly. The free flow of customer insight represents an extremely valuable feedback mechanism. The ability to separate the wheat from the chaff and turn those insights into actionable developments would be a real competitive advantage.