All your listening will go in vain until you implement it in your product development stage or service. The purpose of listening to customers is to ensure that they get exactly what they want. So, this step of LEO^SM focuses on implementing those ideas from the customers’ (internal as well as external) perspective to enrich their experience with the product or service.

Wegmans’ “theatre of food”

One of the biggest supermarkets in the U.S, Wegmans has their stores in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia. Although Wegmans stores range from 85,000 to 135,000 square feet, thanks to its employees, customers are more than happy with their experiences there. Wegmans employees are always there to guide you on the minutest of the cooking intricacies. They make your shopping enjoyable. In the words of one of the employees of Wegmans, “We sat with the families, broke bread with them. It helps us to understand that we're not just selling a piece of cheese. We're selling a tradition, a quality."

In a world of fierce competition, Wegmans' commitment to employees -- and through them, to customers -- is more than a philosophy.

If Wegmans can do that, why can’t you?

Involve everyone in your organization to enrich customer experience. And, mind that peak performers never compromise on innovation. If you can’t afford innovators, don’t worry. Your internal and external customers can play this role for you. Any innovative organization manages to innovate as an organization, that is, as a human group organized for productive continual innovation.

Internal customers are the employees of the organization. Though their suggestions are often neglected, they can contribute immensely, if provided with the right kind of responsibilities and guidance.

The Ice Cream Maker shows how an organization uses the ideas from its employees in its process of its resurrection. “They know more than anyone does about what they do every day,” opines The Ice Cream Maker. The internal customers should constantly look for ways to improve what they do, to cater to the external customers brilliantly and make their experience a treasurable one. And for that, creative inputs are needed from the employees. It takes a great many silly ideas to spawn one feasible one. So, let the ideas pour like rain. Employees’ contribution should center around:

• a strong desire to change how they do things
• a willingness to think outside the box
• an urge to improve everything they do

Let’s take the example of Sony Electronics, USA. They enrich their customers’ experiences by providing them with an array of choices. Sony realizes that consumers have very different needs and choices that can't be fulfilled by a one-size-fits-all approach. Their engineers always keep an eye over the emerging trends and technologies and amalgamate them with the needs of the end-users. That is why Sony’s customers never find themselves with a dearth of choices.