Thursday, July 09, 2015

The Battle For Customer Interface Is On

"Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening."

This sentence you must have read it hundreds on time on the web either on LinkedIn, Facebook or on blogs. Indeed, the statement is very strong. We are in the middle of a real industrial revolution, that shakes up all kind of business models we ever experienced. But what is far more interesting, is what the article is about: customer interface.

In this blog I don't write that much about customer relationship management as we may have known it: Big data centers with softwares allowing to have an efficient response all through the decision making process of customers.

Because today, customer relationship management is more than ever the core of businesses created value. The real equity built is not much in the brands you build, but rather in the customer interface businesses can propose to customers. What does that mean? That means that you don't need to master the whole components of one product, but the interface you propose to the end user is the key to the real value you propose to customers.

That empowers to me more than ever new mobile devices, but also brick & mortar retails.