Relationship, Trust and Commitment

All the experts agreed that there are many positive outcomes deriving from the co-creation process with customers. Some even stated that they have never experienced any negative outcomes. In most cases the relationship between a customer and a company grew stronger and the opinion of the customers changed to more positive. Usually this change happened in the beginning of the relationship.

I would say it was mainly growing as a stronger relationship. The biggest change happens in the beginning, they completely change their view of us and what happens after that is mainly that you build this into a stronger relationship. (Expert 1)

Generally speaking when working with our customers they were actually pleasantly surprised about the co-innovation process and working closely with our team. So far I haven’t had sets where somebody was disappointed about the whole thing and said I don’t like you anymore. So yes it has been a good experience. (Expert 3)

Even though the co-creation relationship would be discontinued, the experts experienced that it had not had any negative impacts on the relationship. The decision not to continue with the co-creation process had been done in a mutual agreement with the customer when both sides consider that the fit is not so good.

The key is to be open and communicate this clearly. Expert 3 considers that sometimes the time is not right for co-creation with this specific customer thus you can give it another try in the future.

From a customer perspective I have never seen anything that would be negative, I only have seen positive things for both sides even if we have jointly decided to discontinue. That has not been any issue either so I would say it’s really a win-win always. (Expert 1)

Terminating co-innovation is a very hard statement, in those cases that we’ve faced so far, when we arrived to a conclusion that it’s not working at that point in time, but further down the line as the product is more developed it makes sense to get together again and have another look and maybe co-innovate with them. Never was a bad breakup! (Expert 3)

According to the experts, some customers have low trust on the company thus it can be a huge benefit to open up. Trust increases over time and the relationship grows stronger. According to Expert 2, if the customer is not willing to be honest and transparent, co-creation is not a feasible option.

When we have a customer that has very low trust on us, it can be a huge benefit to open up. Like I said before, it’s not we and them, it’s us, it’s one team and lot of customers have become really close friends because you work so close to another.

Also I feel that openness and trust towards us and how we work, that has also increased. (Expert 1)

I expect them to be honest, transparent and give the data and most importantly – tell me what’s their problem that they would like to solve. I will then propose the ideas that we could work on and what’s feasible. (Expert 2)

Important is to be careful when promising something and be honest when setting the expectations. Experts state the you have to clearly set the frames what is possible and what is not in terms of innovation since otherwise it can go wrong.

Also, the co-creation process should be communicated comprehensibly to customers.

Always happens that either you set the expectations too high or low. If low - then the customer is not interested, if high – this might not be reached. Most importantly, be honest. (Expert 2)

Be very transparent what is innovation what it isn’t, to be very upfront about that. Tell as it is. (Expert 3)

We’re very clear and very careful not to overpromise anything. (Expert 5)

First of all the customers need to understand the co-innovation process we offer to them. This means for us that we have a very clear process at hand to provide to them. So we shouldn’t promise something that is not achievable, then taking in the customer and in the end the customer is very disappointed. This is about not promising too much. (Expert 7)

Naturally, further down the relationship the commitment increases. Successful co-creation requires dedicated experts and time from both sides, otherwise the project is stuck. As Expert 7 states, when you provide dedicated people to work with, co-creation might be very successful and strengthen the relationship with a customer.

They want honesty and transparency and your executives have to dedicate time, this is commitment on both sides. You have to show results, you have to commit, and you have to be honest and transparent. (Expert 6)

If the customer is not even willing to invest their time for this opportunity to be used later, maybe the problem is not big enough. If they want us to talk about money from the beginning, it’s maybe not for us. (Expert 8)

If a customer provides some dedicated people to co-innovate with you, then it might be very beneficial and strengthen the relationship with the customer. The customer might expect wonders and they are maybe disappointed if this is not fulfilled when they don’t take the time and we don’t take the time to really have regular exchanges and regular team building and really working on the same problems and solutions.

So it can go to both directions, it depends on the set-up and the density of collaborating. (Expert 7)