A Tesla Smart Home Appliance Could Change the Industry Forever — This is Why
What can companies in the smart home space learn from one of the tech industry’s giants?
Elon Musk is known around the world for his innovation, his business acumen, his record-shattering wealth. His rocket company, SpaceX, just won a historic $2.89 billion NASA contract to take astronauts back to the moon, a sure sign that Musk’s influence and wealth will continue to rise.
How can Musk’s business principles help you? Here are four strategies that any company can adopt to boost its success in the smart home space.
Focus On Ownership Experience rather than just Shopping Experience
On an earnings call in 2020, Musk said it was vital to “maximize the area under the curve of customer happiness.” In today’s business environment, it’s not enough to get products out the door. You want to keep customers happy and turn them into brand ambassadors.
“It’s what results in long-term value creation,” Musk said on the same call, “Our goal is always really to do the best thing for the customers.”
No matter what product you’re selling, you’re faced with decisions that impact customer happiness. Are you digging deep into the analytical data to make the most of the onboarding experience? When a user stops using your product regularly, are you prepared to bring them back with new features or other simple enticements so they’ll get back on board? And what are you doing to delight and reward those customers who are already loyal users?
You Need Feedback
Musk once said, “Take as much feedback from as many people as you can about whatever idea you have. Seek critical feedback. Ask them what’s wrong. You often have to draw it out in a nuanced way to figure out what’s wrong.”
The beauty of smart home products? They offer abundant opportunities for capturing real-time positive and negative feedback from users. If your product is connected to an app, you’ll generate feedback on the onboarding process and the user experience just by analyzing the onboarding usage data. Even the simplest products can offer enough feedback to help you deepen your understanding of your customer base and its needs. Consider using “Segmented NPS” for a more advanced feedback opportunity.
Another critical piece of feedback? Online reviews. While they are the bane of many businesses, each review offers another data point ready for analysis. Even the worst reviews are an opportunity to learn, grow, and improve.
You might recall that back in 2017, Musk took to Twitter to answer customers’ questions about Tesla. At the time he was worth $185 billion, and he definitely didn’t need to be fielding customer requests on social media. But he did it, and four years later it’s something people still talk about. Listening and responding to feedback resonates deeply and strongly with consumers.
Be Passionate About What You Do
Google “Elon Musk” and you’ll see the word “passion” creep into every article and post. He’s built a career on turning his passions into businesses that change the world.
Whether in business or life in general, Musk says, “People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.” What can you do to sustain your passion? Is it having the time to focus on product development? Or maybe it’s having the time to think more deeply about your customer data?
Once you’ve thought through your own business passions, turn the question back to your customers. How can you share that passion with them?
Keep Improving Your Products
“Great companies are built on great products,” says Musk. The very best customer service can’t help a business if the product itself is doomed to fail.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. In any business, it’s easy to lose sight of the product and get sidetracked working through issues with staffing, marketing, or finance. If you can keep your teams focused on their areas of expertise, your products will have the best shot at being the best in class.
How can you bring the focus back to your product?
- Focus on the customer.
- Pay attention to feedback.
- Bring passion to your work.
- Build a great product.
How can Copilot help get it done?
As the leading automated Customer Experience platform for consumer electronics companies, Copilot offers manufacturers of connected consumer products and smart home devices the opportunity to automatically engage end-users with meaningful, data-driven, and behavior-based communications. That means we can directly help you improve your customer centricity leaving you to focus on what you do best: bringing your passion to the work of building great products.
Ready to get started? Let’s talk.
