Astro Top Gun: Customer is The King

As old as the adage may sound, even in the new media industry where digital rules and milliseconds count, your customer remains king. The concept of pleasing customers and giving what they want still applies.

Henry Tan who now holds the newly-created position of Astro Group Chief Content and Consumer Officer (GCCCO) said that those who think what excites them will excite others are fooling themselves in this world of fast-paced technology.

"The customer is really the centre or the key star attraction. And I think anybody who does technology and get excited about technology for technology’s sake will miss the point, because you are just excited about things that the consumer may not be. So, the hero, the focus point, must always be the customer," says Tan.

With the waning in interest for paid media - newspapers and satellite television - Tan said that it is crucial go back to basics and re-evaluate how one applies technology into their innovations and products which they are selling.

"In fact, now is the opportunity to go back to basics, re-evaluate the fundamentals and ask yourself: Given new capabilities from technology, how do you apply that? That is what will make you successful. There is no point to come up with all kinds of capabilities only to have the consumers say, 'That’s not what I want. That’s not how I would like to use your service'" says Tan.

Tan pointed out that is crucial for those who want to make it in this internet world to dare to test the waters and sometimes, what one may get may be of the most pleasant surprise.

The advent of technology at our fingertips has enabled customers to decide what they will use it for, even though it may differ from the very reason it was set up for.

He cites YouTube as an example which started out for a frivolous purpose and failed miserably initially, Tan said that working on the failures and evolving them into better things is the very essence of creating great products.

"It is through trial and error. Some of you would know that YouTube actually started out as a dating service, That didn’t work. Then, they evolved and asked people to post content instead. Then they realised that the idea of getting people to fit in content (on the platform) is very well like. That’s how they evolved."

Today, the YouTube that you know is so different than what it was originally designed for. So, again the hero is not the technology. The hero is the customers. You use technology to serve the consumers. The focus is not on technology but the customer."

The question is, how do we use technology to serve and delight the customer?" Tan asks

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