Build For Change: Revolutionizing Customer Engagement through Continuous Digital Innovation

by Alan Trefler

In Build for Change: Revolutionizing Customer Engagement through Continuous Digital Innovation, Alan Trefler reveals a nascent generation of emboldened customers that are turning the tables on brands and companies that market to them. These customers don’t want to be “sold” to. They engage only when they sense transparency, authenticity, and trust. Today’s loudest fans can become tomorrow’s noisiest detractors. They are active users of online social channels and can influence thousands and even millions of consumers.

Build for Change offers a warning to companies that are failing to see the coming customerpocalypse, and practical advice and examples to those that are grappling with how to survive in a radically new customer engagement paradigm. It concludes that given the viral speed with which customer behaviors are changing, organizations need ways to predict customer desires, adapt in the moment to new changes, and be so reciprocal and contextually aware that both customers and staff will trust them, respect them, and want to engage with them.

This kind of customer engagement will be omnipresent and transformational. It is embodied in a new software layer that represents a company’s DNA. It will be more important than physical offices and retail stores. It will actually empower customers to engage, while directing how they are served, informed, and rewarded. And because it is DNA, it cannot be outsourced or found on some shelf.

Adopting the Build for Change approach to surviving the future means revolutionizing the customer experience and re-thinking technology, all with businesspeople at the forefront. It is the true promise of digital innovation and a call to action.

Genres: Business, Technology

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Tim Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

While "Build for Change" is starting to show its age in the current fast moving world of digital. It does give useful background and a view on your mindset to approach digital change projects.

[The 99th Edition · Rating 2 out of 5]

Blinkist

[Aaron Aoyume · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very good insights

The first impression is that of an almost amateurish, poorly-written "CEO who wants to pitch about his company" kind of book, but if you manage to get to Chapter Five, it becomes a rewarding experience. There are some good insights about how messy IT can be in big companies, and Trefler's depiction of "zombie system", "fingernetting" and "rogue system" are very precise, pictures drawn by some one who has certainly has seen a lot. There is a lot of selling of Pega, of course, a lot of Generation D and "customerpocalypse", but if you get to the really important stuff, this is still a book worth reading.

[Javier Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is one thing that often gets in the way of simple processes. The programmes that many companies use are simply too complicated. This is because of the way we make software today. Entrepreneurs and managers determine what the programme must be able to do, and the IT department then assembles it. The problem is, the managers are not experts in designing and creating suitable software systems. The developers, on the other hand, usually have no idea about the customers. They don't know what the customers want and what makes them tick. Therefore, they try to meet the requirements of the managers. After all, they get the order from the management. If you present the resulting systems to the employees, that is still one thing, but if you present them to the customers, then a "customer apocalypse" threatens.

To improve systems, the author suggests merging the IT and technical departments. He uses an analogy from plant breeding. If you want a flower that both smells good and looks great, you have to cross two species; one fragrant and one beautiful. This requires innovation centres, the alignment of the organisation with customer processes, a new positioning of the management and new rules in budgeting for innovation.

[Alex Devero · Rating 3 out of 5]

The rise of Generation D threatens to destroy any businesses unable to keep up with their high expectations. Businesses that fulfill ever-changing customer needs through constant innovation and flexible, dynamic internal processes will succeed. The rest will bite the dust!