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The term "customer participation" is sometimes used interchangeably with "customer engagement," but to do so misses the mark on why the former is so much more than the latter.

What is customer participation, anyway?

The best way to understand customer participation is to see it as a higher level of customer engagement.

Customer engagement is an umbrella term for any type of communication between a business and its customer, and there are differing degrees of engagement. Some tactics, such as connecting with brand fans on social media or via e-newsletters, fall into the lower level of engagement, because they tend to be episodic and superficial.

Customer participation falls into the high-touch end of the spectrum, because it fosters ongoing collaboration and communication between the customer and the brand.

Participation is more than feedback and collecting insights/survey data. It's about actively involving customers in important aspects of the brand and business—from innovation to marketing.

Customer participation encourages brand loyalty because it makes your customers feel that their opinions are valued and that they are invested in the growth of your brand.

What does GDPR have to do with it?

The implementation of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018 raised awareness about privacy concerns, including what brands are doing with customer data and how they're protecting the rights of consumers.

To comply with GDPR, many companies will simply revise a privacy policy and get consumers to consent through a double opt-in process, improve their email marketing practices, and enable a customer to withdraw their consent.

But that isn't enough: It's the bare minimum of how brands should respect and engage with consumers. Brands need to begin thinking above and beyond privacy and toward participation.

Instead of worrying about how to get customers to opt in to receiving marketing messages or completing surveys, the smartest brands—those that will not merely survive but surpass the competition—are the ones that truly understand how to create an experience that customers want to be part of, giving customers the opportunity to work with the brand itself to create together.

The Value of Co-Creation

Co-creation has been talked about for years by academics and business professors who have acknowledged it as the future of innovation. But by actually providing a platform for innovation, creativity, and collaboration...

  • You create an engaged community that customers want to be part of.
  • You can incubate ideas grounded in research that are vetted by a small army of brand fans.
  • Those fans will then be willing to put their passion, insights, and unique experiences with your brand into practice to help you.

Co-creation is a natural evolution of crowdsourcing—the practice of putting out an open call for ideas to an interested group. But crowdsourcing has its limitations, and that is where customer participation comes in.

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How Customer Participation Builds Trust in the Age of GDPR

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of David Gardner

David Gardner is VP of marketing at Chaordix, a leader in customer-driven innovation and co-creation software, working with diverse global brands.

Twitter: @David11Gardner

LinkedIn: David Gardner