Murphy made his observation in an interview with Silicon Republic. In summarising his digital strategy he said: “The beauty of digital transformation is that it’s about using customer co-creation, and this is becoming all-pervasive.”
As an example of this Murphy cites DHL, who are the global market leader in logistics. DHL has conducted over 6,000 co-creation engagements with its customers. Examples include Parcelcopter, which is a drone delivery service created through a research and development partnership that DHL in Germany.
A second example with the logistics firm is with a service for delivering “packages to the trunks of Volvo owners’ parked cars, a delivery experience created in collaboration with Volvo.”
Co-creation, as defined by the Harvard Business Review, involves providing customers the right to participate in the design of their own experience. This is not only by giving input about what they like and do not like, as might come from traditional market research. The process also involves giving customers the tools to allow them to become the actual designers.
An example of co-creation in practice is with the My Starbucks Ideas platform. Here in excess of 200,000 ideas have been submitted. Starbucks saw an opportunity to directly tap their passionate customer base for ideas to improve their products and services. According to Suma, customers provide value with their ideas for new flavors, products and services. In return, Starbucks returns value through a transparent process that leads to the best ideas becoming part of the overall customer experience.
Another common area is with the travel sector, where data is drawn from analysis of hotels’ websites. This allows chains to co-create the experience environment. Information can also be drawn from social media, where analysis can be conducted to assess the relationship between customer engagement in value co-creation and customer satisfaction.
These examples highlight an important cultural aspect of digital transformation and that companies which push ahead with a unilateral model, without consulting business customers and consumers, are less likely to succeed.
