Radical DIY for Hybrids

Radical do-it-yourself customers go to extremes to customize goods and services. A recent AP news story by Tim Molloy (8/14/05) tells the story of Ron Gremban, an electrical engineer and environmentalist. Mr. Gremban has modified his Toyota Prius with 18 more batteries that enable him to achieve 80 mpg.

The article goes on to describe Toyota's initial resistance to such "tinkerers", not wanting them to alter the hybrid vehicles. However, Toyota now seems that these "codesigners" might provide ideas and know-how for enhancements.

The question that we can derive from this story is what should your company's policies be with regard to radical do-it-yourself? Is it embraced? Resisted? How do customers communicate their radical explorations? How do companies learn about them?

Customers Helping One Another

An interesting approach that provides a strong foundation for DIY customers is to establish communication channels that enable customers to help one another. INC. (August, 2005, pg. 36) ran a piece about online peer forums, where customers-to-customer interactions provided a lot of the technical support for a small software company. The forums are relatively easy and cost effective to set up, and they require about an hour a day of moderating (for a customer base of 2,000).

As we mention in our book, this is an example of a company "owning the context" of customer communication and "encouraging articulation" by customers -- especially in the sense of including them as codesigners and cocreators of a service experience.

Photo Kiosks

One of the real growth areas in digital photography are kiosks that enable customers to do their own photo printing. According to the WSJ (8/4/05, B1, B4), photo kiosks are appearing in hospitals, cruise ships, and other high-traffic locations. Kiosks are grabbing a larger share of the images customers print. Kiosks share increased to 17% in 2004, while home printing decreased to 54%.

The trick for these kiosks to be successful is where customers access the kiosk (one kiosk needs to do 100 prints a day to justify the cost). Carnival Cruise estimates its kiosks are turning out 200-500 prints and that the program is barely turning a profit, while 7-11's test program in five stores was discountinued.

Outsourcing Customer Training

Here's an interesting trend -- outsourcing the creation and delivery of customer education. This article has several examples of companies like Intuit who have partnered with third-party organizations to build customer expertise. Most of the solutions are centered around e-learning, a technology that most companies don't maintain as a core competency.

Lots of good ideas here to consider to build the expertise of your customers.