Technology
Problem solver
How to foster innovation with your customers
By Abby Cymerman
Smart Business Columbus | July 2008
Page 1 of 2
Joe Sanda
President and CEO, Astute Solutions
Joe Sanda wants to get
into his customers’ heads.
The founder, president and CEO of Astute Solutions says
that the only way to understand
what your customers want is to
ask them.
“We’re driven by listening to
what some of the problems are
with our customers and what
their opportunities, needs and
wants are,” Sanda says.
As head of the $12.8 million
provider of software and solutions for consumer-focused
companies, Sanda points to
Astute’s work with British
Airways. By paying attention to
what the client’s needs were,
the company recently created a
prepaid debit card to compensate passengers at a point of
failure, such as when baggage is
lost, a concept that Sanda and
his 65 employees hope to
expand to other airlines.
Smart Business spoke with
Sanda about how to create
great concepts with your clients
and deliver what they want.
Q. What are your keys to
growing a successful company?
Focus on your customers. Try
to understand what they want,
what they think and what they
feel. That’s something we really
strive to do.
Q. How do you keep that
focus on the customer?
First, we try to make sure
we’re driving our product direction based on the market and
the customers, not just internal
R&D. A lot of product companies try to come up with a product, as opposed to listening to
what customers are looking for
and what the market’s looking for. We try to be customer-focused that way, and we get
some of our best ideas from our
clients and prospects.
Second, we try to get in touch
with our customers’ feelings. We
do that in a variety of ways,
whether it is a focus group, an
advisory council or customer
surveys that go beyond a satisfaction survey — actually listening to what they’re looking for
and connecting with the voice of
the customer. We try to understand what our customers are
feeling, how well we’re doing,
what we can do better and then
provide feedback.
The third step is trying
to make sure you have a
customer feedback solution. Have some way of
collecting data that’s
actionable, and use that
to improve what you’re
doing based on what your
customers are telling you.
Periodically, I’ve hired a
consultant to talk to our
customers about what
they would like to see us
do better or what we
could do better with a
product. It’s not to say that
we don’t talk with our
account managers and
professional services people, as well, but we make
sure we collect some
independent input, where
we might find out things we
wouldn’t know otherwise. We’re
not just counting on one channel.
Q. Why are those steps
important?
High growth is based on meeting the needs of a market and
meeting the needs of your customers. If you think you’re in
touch with it but you’re really
misconnecting, you’re missing
opportunities for growth.
Some of our best product ideas
come from our customers. They
have some great ideas, but putting those ideas into motion and
creating new products and services based on those is also a key
to growth. It keeps you in touch.
