Saturday, February 2, 2013

The Coming Customer Workforce

I think we are entering an era where the customer's role is going to switch from a passive recipient of a organizations efforts or products to and active participant in an organization's success.  The seeds have already been sown in many different instances.  I categorize the models as follows (though admittedly there is no bright line separating these models) :

Affiliate - Here participants receive compensation for marketing for a company.  Amazon's affiliate program or refer-a-friend campaigns represent affiliate relationships.
Open source -  Participants actively contribute to improving a product directly and in return receive the enhancements others contribute as well, but rarely receive monetary compensation.  Drupal and Firefox are two great examples of this model.    
Crowd sourcing - Participants provide information or services that improve a product or service but the participants and others do not benefit directly from the enhancements, but may be compensated for their participation.
Financial - Financial participation is where customers contribute money in order for a product to be developed or improved.  Kickstarter is the most well known of this model, but traditional stock purchases could be viewed this way as well.
Marketplace - Marketplaces are instances where suppliers and buyers are brought together by a platform that serves as the marketplace.  For instance, Etsy or Craigslist use the marketplace model.
Participation -  Where the customer provides information that improves an offering usually without compensation.  Amazon's reviews or Yelp are good examples of this model.

The ideal model would be where a customer participates and they directly benefit and the organization benefits as well.  The best example of this actually working is Facebook.  When a user would ask a friend to join, the user, the friend, and Facebook would all benefit for the same reason, the network was now a little richer because of the new participant.

Definitely more to come on this...

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